Eco-Friendly Ecommerce Packaging

Seller platforms and marketplaces such as Etsy, BigCommerce, and Amazon have enabled small businesses to more easily sell their products directly to consumers.

While this is a good thing for small businesses, the increase in online shopping means a lot more individual products being shipped. This increase can also mean more waste, and larger environmental impact.

When you’re selling eco-friendly products online, sustainable packaging and shipping can be a big concern.

Like traditional brick-and-mortar stores, Ecommerce brands have to consider their product packaging. But they also have the additional responsibility of shipping their product directly to customers. If you’re mailing your products direct-to-consumer it is important to incorporate sustainable shipping materials.

Your ecommerce packaging protects your product and establishes your brand identity. Both your product packaging and the packaging you use to ship needs to be durable, but also lightweight enough to avoid high shipping costs. Often this can mean choosing plastic packaging, but while plastic can be a cheap option the cost to our environment is huge.

How can I make my ecommerce packaging eco-friendly?

We’ve all seen photos online of ridiculous packages received from big box retailers. Tiny products in huge padded boxes, or items unnecessarily wrapped in layers upon layers of non-recyclable plastic. This problem persists despite offers of order consolidation and empty promises to do better.

These problems are easy for thoughtful ecommerce brands to solve. By making more sustainable choices about how you package and ship your product you can reduce your environmental impact while still giving your customers a great unboxing experience.

Can Ecommerce be Eco-Friendly?

Eco-friendly Packaging for Your Online Business:

Sustainable Product Packaging

Is your product packaging necessary, or just nice-to-have? Packaging makes up a large portion of household waste - the most sustainable packaging is no packaging at all!

Eliminating packaging entirely isn't usually an option for ecommerce brands. But it is still possible to thoughtfully reduce the amount of packaging you use, and then work on choosing sustainable materials for the remainder.

Flexible product packaging is a good way to reduce waste when shipping to customers. Stand up pouches are lightweight and offer a higher product-to-package ratio - meaning less waste overall. Use compostable stand up pouches and you have a lightweight solution that eliminates needless waste.

Sustainable Shipping

Now that you’ve packaged your product, you’ll need to send it to your customer. How you do this will depend partially on the product packaging you’ve chosen - Some products will need to be shipped in boxes, whereas others can ship in either rigid or flexible mailers.

Heavy packaging can unnecessarily increase shipping costs and fuel needed for transportation. Large or unusually shaped packaging can do the same.

Fragile items may need extra padding. Weigh the waste of using a little extra material against the potential waste of a damaged product and returns. Use void fill or padding made from sustainable materials where possible!

Sustainability at Elevate Packaging - How We Practice What We Preach

At Elevate Packaging we use eco-friendly shipping materials! We use our compostable shipping labels to ship out your orders and, where possible, our 100% compostable mailers. We also reuse cardboard boxes and void fill where possible, and encourage our customers to do the same.

Compostable Mailers

Elevate Packaging’s Compostable Poly Mailers

A relatively new option for ecommerce - compostable mailers are perfect for shipping apparel, soft goods, and other non-fragile products.

After customers receive their products they can dispose of the mailer in the compost, minimizing the amount of waste that goes to landfill.

Our compostable poly mailers are durable, lightweight and water-resistant - designed to reduce shipping costs, reduce product damage, and reduce impact on the environment!

Eco-Friendly Compostable Mailers

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*Don’t forget the label! The shipping label on your mailer or box should ideally match the intended end-of-life for the rest of the materials. Our compostable shipping labels ensure that your entire ecommerce shipping solution is compostable.