Sustainable Packaging
We all know how important it is to reduce our impact on the environment. Many businesses are now improvising with new ways of designing and producing their products, attempting to lessen their carbon and environmental footprint, while simultaneously saving on costs. The concept of “cradle-to-cradle” — taking responsibility for a product’s impact from the sourcing of the materials to its ultimate disposal — is also becoming increasingly popular. And of course that’s something to be happy about!
At Ecossentials, we know a webshop is often accompanied with a certain ecological impact. However, with the right attitude a lot can be done to minimize this impact!
How We Pack: https://ecossentials.eu/how-we-pack/
That’s why orders are completely free of plastic packaging or filling. The packages themselves are 100% recyclable and 100% compostable. We use noissue Compostable Mailers, reuse boxes from our suppliers or ship our orders in our Ecossentials boxes made from recycled cardboard! And instead of plastic tape, we seal our boxes with eco-friendly paper tape. Simple, right?
But one of the biggest culprits when it comes to an industry’s impact is still packaging materials and accessories. The cradle-to-cradle concept needs to take into account the shipping of a product from the producer, through the retailer, and onto the consumer – a process which often involves significant quantities of expensive packaging materials. This has led to a wave of innovative new eco-friendly alternatives to traditional packaging materials. From recyclable plastics to biodegradable containers, there is seemingly no end to the options available to the environmentally conscious business. Here are a few tips your business can consider:
Reduce, Recycle, Repurpose
If you’re looking to make your packaging more sustainable, the first step that we recommend is to find ways to use less of it. Whatever packaging you use should have instructions for its next life, whether it should be reused, recycled, or composted.
If recovery is your sustainability priority, paper mailers may sometimes be better because they’re easy to recycle and compost. But keep in mind that paper is heavier to ship than poly, so your overall transit emissions will go up.
Compostable mailers & plantbased packaging
As mentioned above, we use the compostable mailers from noissue to ship a part of our orders. Why did we choose their mailers? Well, for starters, noissue has a great business ethics: sustainable, social & creative! Their range is curated to ensure they’re always offering a sustainable packaging solution, and it’s something they don’t compromise on. Every product they offer, from tissue paper to stickers, goes through an extensive vetting and testing process, so they can offer their customers a product that is sustainable and high quality.
Secondly, their mailers are made from cornstarch, an organic material that has made in-roads into the eco-friendly packaging industry. Derived from the corn or maize plant, it has plastic-like properties, which can be used in many contexts that have traditionally relied upon plastics. Creating this bio-based polymer uses only 0.05% of the annual global corn crop, making it an incredibly low impact design.
Now, I can hear you thinking how composting mailers is better than them going to landfill. It all comes down to gas. In a landfill, compostable and non-compostable waste is piled multiple stories high. Anything buried under the top few layers relies on anaerobic (without oxygen) decomposition. This anaerobic environment produces a combination of methane gas and carbon dioxide. Methane has over 25 times the greenhouse gas potential of carbon dioxide and contributes more rapidly to global warming.
Note: If someone can’t compost it, then compostable plastic should go in the trash. It may seem like recycling would be better, but that’s not the case. Compostable plastics are not made to be reused.
noissue (and we too) hopes that businesses and consumers will continue to become more conscious of reducing the use of plastics and choosing more sustainable alternatives. The recent climate strikes and documentaries like David Attenborough’s Our Planet have given environmentalism a new place in our consciousness.
Are you a small business? Make sure to check https://www.noissue.com/ out for all kinds of sustainable packaging solutions. We only have one planet, so we all need to take steps to protect it! Are you in?
