Sustainable Packaging: Providing Products With Value [Examples]
All the plastic packaging that came with eCommerce and mass manufacturing have done enough damage to mother nature. Those at the forefront of “paying back to earth” have been adopting sustainable packaging and inspiring people to do less damage to the earth.
Looking forward to living in a world of sustainability and 💯% natural products and recyclable materials. We decided to inspire you too.
Let’s get started…
The Problem: Non-Sustainable Packaging
Did you know that forty percent of the worldwide plastic comes from packaging? Most of them are only valid for one-time use before taken for disposal or incineration.
And did you also know that only a third of packaging made from plastic can be recycled? This means less than 50% of the global plastic actually gets recycled.
➕ The waste of not recycling costs the United Kingdom £78 million annually.
Plastic is purposely made to not decompose for thousands of years. This makes it clog and pollute the natural sources of water.
If that happens when plastic is set for disposal, then what happens when plastic is sent for incineration?
Based on The Environmental Impact of Plastic Waste Incineration research by Rajmund Kuti: incineration poses the greatest threat to the environment by the spread of toxic gases that harm both human and animal health alike.
☢️ So plastic has both air and water pollution extremely dangerous issues that the 21st century is still struggling to eliminate.
📢 Hence, the cry for more sustainable packaging solutions.
What Does Sustainable Packaging Mean?
Sustainable packaging is a fresh way of thinking that corporates and companies started to adopt in the current era that aims at using eco-friendly packaging solutions as a way of saving money, resources, and maintaining the least environmental impact.
Simply put, sustainable packaging is using product packaging that projects minimum or no depletion of natural resources.
For packaging to be considered sustainable, the Sustainable Packaging Coalition stated these 8 criteria:
Why Is Sustainable Packaging Important for Your eCommerce Store?
- Increases your social responsibility by miles hence a huge impact on brand loyalty.
- Not only you’ll be producing less harmful packaging bags, but you’ll also add value to your community.
- Make them feel like every product they buy from you is a good deed they make for the environment.
- Customers tend to value, respect, and develop loyalty towards brands that don’t care about money and selling only.
- By showing valuable core values like these, you’ll open the road to new audience criteria to get interested in your brand.
💡 Also Read: E-commerce Website Designs That We Love and Inspire Us
Sustainable Packaging Ideas Inspired by eCommerce Brands
E-commerce brands that use sustainable packaging to inspire your way through gaining profits and giving back to the environment:
#1 Inside-Out Sustainable Fragrance Business
A perfumes business that’s committed to producing everything earth-friendly, from the product itself to the bottling and boxing of items.
View the message that Michelle Pfeiffer, the CEO of Henry Rose, was very conscious to prove.
She wanted to prove that people didn’t have to sacrifice quality for safety, or vice versa. And she did. ⏫
#2 Footwear Sustainability
“All birds” is an eCommerce brand in the footwear market that supports the sustainability movement by using 90% recycled cardboard packaging. Not only that, but they also manufacture their shoes from natural and recycled products.
#3 PVH’s Ethical Material Sourcing
You probably didn’t hear of this before, but PVH is the company that runs Calvin Klein is the same owner of Tommy Hilfiger and many other American clothing brands.
It’s considered the first clothes and apparel corporation to join the How2Recyle movement. Aiming to reach ZERO waste by 2030.
The company has pledged to have sustainable packaging that’s 100% ethical by 2025. Today, Calvin Klein has 74% recyclable packaging. They’ve also changed to a thinner clothes packaging material which means they were able to save annually over 200 tons of plastic waste.
#4 Unilever’s Sustainable Living Plan
Unilever has a Sustainable Living Plan that they’re very committed to achieving by 2025.
They consider themselves the 1st company in the cosmetics and hygiene industry to commit to providing 100% reusable, recyclable or compostable plastic packaging by 2025.
#5 Roberts Bakery’s Recyclable Wrappers
Roberts Bakery is considered the first UK bakery to use 100% sustainable packaging. They use naturally sourced paper wraps for this bread line and they managed to cut the use of plastic up to 53%
What Are the Benefits of Sustainable Packaging?
Let’s dive deep into the benefits of sustainable packaging:
1. Increase Brand Loyalty & Revenue
A study by CGS shows 70% of US consumers think of sustainability as “Somewhat Important” while 47% of them would still pay 25% more for brands that pledge sustainability.
FYI 🔍
A report by Nielsen shows 48% of consumers will change their purchasing habits if it means lowering their footprints on the environment. Nielsen also estimates sustainability sales to reach $150 billion by 2022.
2. More Storage – Lower Costs
Implementing sustainable packaging into your system means reducing packaging materials and minimizing waste. This, in turn, will result in efficient free storage with lower costs.
Track Your Inventory with Ease
Create a free store on ExpandCart and utilize our Omnichannel integrationsFree for life, no credit card, no hidden fees
3. Decreased Carbon Footprint
By using fluting and liner made with virgin fiber sourced from the forest, you can minimize the impact on the environment while also using strong packaging to protect your products for far and long shipping journeys.
💡 Case Study:
HP is a notebook brand in China that produces approximately 40 million notebooks annually.
They wanted to come up with a solution that lowers costs, earth footprints, and still protects their products while shipping across the globe.
Such a solution helped them decrease packaging materials by 29%.
Not only they reduced materials and maintained product protection. But also lowered shipping costs since each box weighs less than other non-sustainable packaging solutions!
4. Lower Shipping Costs
As mentioned above ⏫, switching to smaller, eco-friendly packaging not only benefits the environment, it removes the burden of shipping cost from your shoulders.
💡 For Example,
If you send out a 12x12x12 box that weighs 1 lb from New York to Los Angeles, it’ll cost around $23.65 However, if you fit your product in a smaller box, say 10x10x10, you only pay $17.72 and save up to $5.93.
Back to You…
Do you intend to switch to sustainable packaging in the near future? Let us know in the comments below!
Transform to Sustainable Packaging
Create a free store on ExpandCart and utilize our unlimimted shipping and dropshipping solutionsFree for life, no credit card, no hidden fees
