As a webshop owner, you’re looking forward to the upcoming period, as several peak moments are just around the corner. Black Friday, the year-end period, and the sales contribute significantly to your total yearly revenue. However, not everything is rosy! Black Friday is a true “Black Friday” when it comes to environmental friendliness. The waste mountain during this period is enormous, making such peak moments have a large ecological footprint. This is something you, as a business owner, should think about! When packaging products, you can reduce the waste mountain. As an entrepreneur, you need to take responsibility. In this blog, we’ll share how you can package a package ecologically.
Ecological Packaging and Filler Materials
Most waste is caused by careless packaging of products. We’re talking about the type of materials, but also how you use those materials. When you think about sustainable business practices, you need to carefully assemble your packaging material range. Many companies use plastic packaging materials, but there are plenty of eco-friendly alternatives available. For example, you can opt for recyclable boxes, shipping tubes, mailer boxes, envelopes, and so on.
Don’t pack boxes unnecessarily inside other boxes! The most ecological packaging is the packaging that doesn’t exist. Some products don’t even need packaging. When assembling your product range, this is a factor you need to consider. There are several benefits to this: you’ll not only ship more ecologically, but you’ll also impress consumers and see your margins increase since you’ll use less packaging and filler material.
The range of filler materials is also enormous. Many of the available options don’t take the ecological footprint into account. However, there are eco-friendly alternatives that allow you to ship ecologically. For example, compostable filler chips, filler paper, or wood wool. The choice of filler materials depends on the products you want to ship.
In addition to the filler material, the choice of tape is also important. To ship ecologically, you can replace traditional tape with an eco-friendly, recyclable paper version.
Eco-friendly Packaging
Packaging products might seem simple, but it is far from it. If you pack a small product in a large box, you’ll need a lot of filler material to prevent damage. Obviously, you need to avoid damage, but if you use too big a box and too much filler material, you’ll drive up the costs. If you don’t use eco-friendly materials, the ecological footprint will be enormous! More and more consumers are put off by these situations. The challenge for packagers is to aim for the ideal ratio between the amount of packaging versus the packaged product.
Compensate Through Charity
No matter how hard you try, there will always be some impact on people and the environment. To compensate for that impact, you could consider sponsoring a sustainable charity so that you can proudly carry the label “100% ecological.”
Consider the project ‘OOOT,’ or “One Order, One Tree.” This project combines the power of several entrepreneurs to create a better environment socially and environmentally by planting trees in developing countries.
Invoice or Packing Slip
Packages shipped within the EU do not need to include an invoice. However, we still notice that many webshops print and include invoices or packing slips in packages. This method of working is actually outdated. Modern technology allows invoices and packing slips to be emailed as PDF files to consumers. Many invoicing programs or webshop platforms already offer the option to send invoices automatically. This is particularly convenient and promotes sustainable business practices since paper makes up a large part of our waste stream.
Webship Ships Ecologically!
Shipping ecological packages is slightly more expensive, but you can also highlight this from a marketing perspective. Brand awareness can get a huge boost when you ship packages in an ecological and environmentally friendly way. Want to avoid the extra cost? You can always turn to a fulfillment center like Webship. Webship specializes in inventory management and ships packages for many webshops. To process all webshop orders, Webship buys packaging and filler materials in large quantities. As a result, Webship gets excellent purchasing prices that you can benefit from. Thanks to these economies of scale, you can obtain eco-friendly packaging and filler materials at more affordable prices. On top of that, you can fully focus on growing your webshop while the logistics are handled by true specialists. Interested? Contact Webship via hallo@webship.be!
