Going Green with Your Shipping and Packaging

“Going green” might be seen as a cliché these days, and your friends might even make fun of you if they find out that you started recycling your soda cans, but sometimes the concept is a lot more appropriate depending on the scenario.  It’s very important for businesses to take a step back and think about what “going green” should look like for their company.  Obviously, businesses produce a lot of waste. 7-ideas-greening-shipping-strategy A LOT a lot of waste.  Take a minute to think about all of the shipping boxes, energy, even just the cleaning products, that it takes to supply one single business.  Now take a minute to envision all of the businesses in your immediate vicinity.  Multiple that by the entire world.  That’s a lot of waste!  So even if you don’t feel like recycling at home, you should absolutely feel compelled to get a little greener in the work place.

How do you do this?

Choose Recycled Materials. Order shipping boxes that are made out of old shipping boxes.  Order other products that are made out of recycled materials as well.  Then, recycle them again if you can. Use Environmentally Conscious Filler It’s pretty common knowledge by now that Styrofoam is not biodegradable in the slightest and basically consists of chemicals in its entirety.  Thankfully, there are now plenty of organic options that are more or less the same price as their not-so-organic competition. Choose Appropriate Sizes Have you ever come and wondered when you ordered a washing machine based on the size of the box sitting on your doorstep, only to find that it was the new coffee maker you ordered?  Using a box that’s too big is just a waste or a box and of the packaging material needed to fill it with. Reduce Your Carbon Footprint Choosing ego-friendly materials is the easy part of shipping a product.  The hard part is the enormous carbon footprint created by all of the in-between.  Consider trying to find a shipping company that uses low emission vehicles, or try to have a different company pick up your shipments when they are already in your area making other deliveries.  At the same time, what if you go through all of that trouble and the customer just wants to return what you’ve sent them?  That more or less doubles the waste for one product.  There are many different ways to approach your return policy.

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