Excessive Packaging in E‑commerce – Empower Your Customers

Sustainable Order Fulfillment

The e‑commerce world has changed – at the same time the e‑commerce has changed the world: Nowadays, an own e‑shop is a must for retailers, customers became online shoppers and millions of parcels are sent throughout the world every day.

Well, we all know the ‘side effects’ of that too: millions of tons of waste. Everybody talks about it; everybody knows about it. Special conferences and events are held to reduce the rubbish wave congesting our planet. The most popular phrases sound like this one:

Sustainability has become increasingly critical for organisations to remain relevant and competitive in today’s world.

Well, why don’t we leave after this statement dreamland for a while and get back to reality?

Hi, my name is Lidia. I am the author of this blog, a marketing responsible and a passionate online shopper too. I work for an e-fulfillment company, thus a company providing logistics services for e‑shops. And I am going to share my personal shopping experience with you:

I buy online regularly, thus I participate in creating waste. Recently, I ordered few products from a popular online shop selling cosmetics and dietary supplements. All was easy and my parcel delivered fast. I was very happy with my shopping experience… until I opened the package. And there it was!

All positive experience vanished suddenly.

I had to find my products in the box like a needle in the haystack. There was a huge amount of plastic, once removed, I found each product separately wrapped in bubble foil. At the end, I was the new owner of an empty box, a mountain of plastic and 5 small products, which you can see here:

I sat on the floor, thinking ‘Why are we still doing this nowadays?’ Where are the results of all the sustainability talks over the last years? Or is it not all simple chatter to please the consumers, make them feel fine and give experts something to talk about?

Reducing ecological footprint with Internel

Fortunately, I’m also working for a company, which walks the talk and does things right. We, at Internel, did not jump on the green wave to please some of our clients. We focus on a real change for many years to reduce our ecological footprint with our GOING GREEN* initiative. So, where others talk about how they segregate their company waste, we are 5 steps ahead and surely no green washers.

The following examples show how our team would have packed the parcel with the equal number of products I had ordered before:

The different of green talking and real sustainability is pretty clear:

We only use eco materials for all parcels we make and ship. FSC certified and recycled paper/filling/wrapping materials are standard, bio-degradable materials in case we cannot use boxes. Surely, not all is yet optimal as due to the principle of our activity we help the global waste mountain to increase, but the materials are truly better for our planet, fields, forests, and the sea.

Have a look what we already achieved in terms of sustainability and why we call us the most ecological e‑fulfillment company within CEE: INTERNEL OUR SUSTAINABLE APPROACH IN E‑COMMERCE LOGISTICS

Your turn:

• Do you want to deliver your customers mountains of plastic and ruin their shopping experience like it happened to myself?
• Or do you want to your client’s shopping experience beyond the online world?

If so, then CONTACT US now and ask for a quote in line with a sustainable order fulfillment!

* Our GOING GREEN initiative foresees 0% percent conventional materials usage by end 2022. We have replaced all plastics with paper (FSC standard/recycling) and biodegradable materials. We have convinced our customers, to walk along an ecological e‑commerce path. Our pallets are still stretched in conventional plastic (1% of all our materials used) but due to be replaced with better alternatives until year-end. Our distribution centre is certified for biological products and BREEAM certified for sustainable building performance.