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The Christmas gifts have been delivered, and Secret Santa is done. Now, the work begins for Optoro, a start-up company that aims to reduce the financial and environmental costs of another great holiday tradition: returns. Little known to shoppers, however, is that a majority of returned items never make it back to retailers' shelves. Instead, the items wind their way through liquidators, wholesalers and resellers, many of the purchases ending up in landfills. According to some estimates, as much as two million tons of returned items - most of it undamaged merchandise - are thrown away each year, enough to fill over 200,000 garbage trucks.