Why You Need to Offer Sustainable Packaging and How to Do It Right

Nowadays, a wide array of innovations and eco-friendly initiatives are prominent in the world of the business industry. During the previous years, a lot of companies thought about the betterment of their business while sustaining some eco-friendly approaches. However, as you may notice this time, involvement in sustainable practices and approaches is not that easy to do, but it has progressively become the standardized procedures. 

A lot of businesses and organizations are encouraging everyone to have a collaborative and eco-friendly effort just to sustain the beauty of the environment. Everyone needs to play an integral part in the preservation of the whole environment because it is hard to maintain such a livable planet. 

For you to help the environment in a simple way, it is a must to do some steps and approaches that would benefit the people and the surroundings. So, if you are engaged in an e-commerce store, you may want to align your vision to be more eco-friendly. One of the essential contributions you can make is to utilize sustainable packaging in your business. Suppose you have a business and are engaged in selling goods or other commodities to the consumers. In that case, you might want to consider some eco-friendly materials for the packaging of your products. In this way, you can have sustainable packaging while promoting a green environment. 

For you to be guided properly with the proper procedures in your sustainable packaging e-commerce, this article will give you some ideas about this kind of packaging and how you can implement it for the benefit of the majority. 

What do you Mean by Sustaining Packaging?

Generally, this refers to the development, sourcing, and utilization of packaging alternatives that have minimal environmental footprint and impact. This kind of packaging provides greater benefits and advantages to the consumers and your business, and the environment itself. Simply put, sustainable packaging refers to an earth-friendly type of packaging of your products that does not contribute to the depletion of environmental resources. 

The SPC or the Sustainable Packaging Coalition provides some standards and criteria for specific packaging types to be considered sustainable and eco-friendly. Here are the 8 criteria and standards that they have raised:

1. It should meet the criteria of the market for cost and its performance. 
2. This must be safe, healthy, and beneficial for the communities and individuals throughout the business cycle. 
3. It should be sourced, recycled, manufactured, and transported utilizing renewable energy.
4. It must be efficiently recovered and used in industrial or biological closed-loop rotation. 
5. It should be physically planned and designed to augment energy and materials. 
6. This must enhance the utilization of recycled or renewable material resources.
7. The packaging should be made up of safe and healthy materials throughout the business cycle. 
8. The whole packaging should use and observe utilizing clean technologies or machines and exceptional approaches during the production. 

Sustainable Packaging – Learn Its Benefits and Advantages

Based on the discussions above, you have learned about the alternative solutions towards sustainable packaging and how you can do or implement it for good. But, what do you think are the benefits and advantages of having a sustainable or eco-friendly packaging? For you to know and learn these things, then take a glimpse at the following lists:

• Increase your brand loyalty and have a customer base expansion – If you have sustainable packaging, then much likely, you can have more customers. Thus, this also boosts customer loyalty while you are on it. In fact, there are numerous studies suggesting that customers are factoring in sustainability, especially in choosing what specific type of brands to launch in the market. In addition to that, Nielsen’s study found out that 48% of customers are willing to shift their approaches to consumption just to lessen the impact to the surroundings. It was also noted in Nielsen’s analysis that sustainable sales products in the US have grown by about 20% in the past 7 years. The company speculated that sales might reach at least $150 billion in the succeeding year. 

• Lower costs in shipping – One of the means to practice sustainable packaging is to ship small packages. Once you ship small packages to specific destinations, then you also have a chance to get a lower cost in shipping. 

• Consolidated storage – There are 2 big components in sustainable packaging – minimizing waste and reducing materials for packaging. And once you implement these two things properly, then you can have an efficient storage. Moreover, you can set the limit on the space needed to house the products of your company. 

Essential Steps for Eco-Friendly or Sustainable Packaging

Are you now ready to learn and explore an alternative solution towards sustainable packaging? Well, this section will provide you some notions about doing the proper steps to achieve eco-friendly packaging. Below are some of the things that you need to do just to practice proper sustainable packaging:

1. Do not make any changes all at once. If you have been from practices of non-sustainable, it is quite difficult to entirely change the procedures since there are some procedures that you may not easily do. Changing everything in just one blow may provide more harm. So, it would be better to engage in research first, do some testing, and undergo trial and error processes. Just make some changes little by little for you to successfully implement eco-friendly packaging. 
2. Place an order for product samples. You can place an order for product samples for your packaging. Since numerous companies offer an eco-friendly type of packaging, you need to consider some factors like durability, compatibility to your product, size, and weight.
3. Make some adjustments to your pricing. When making some adjustments to your pricing, it must consider costs for the shipping and materials used. 
4. Just place an order in a small quantity. It is better to place an order in small volumes rather than taking an order in a higher number of quantities. Once you already assessed your order, then that’s the time that you can order in bulk. 

With these simple things, it is expected now that you can understand how to do or implement proper procedures towards sustainable packaging. You can do these ways in your business, and rest assured that you can contribute to the sustenance of the natural resources. 

Image Source: BigStockPhoto.com (Licensed)