How To Make Your Shop Eco-Friendly: Packaging

Let's take a second to think about the environmental impact of our shops. You might put your product in a clear plastic bag before shipping it out in a bubble mailer. This doesn't seem like a lot, but if you have hundreds of orders over time, there are hundreds of bubble mailers and plastic bags going into your customer's trash cans and ending up in the landfill. That's not a nice image I've just put in your head.

So how can we reduce the amount of our packaging that is going into the landfill? I know you don't want to spend tons of money or make big changes to your shop, so I'll explain a few simple tips:

1. Do not throw away your current packaging to replace with eco-friendly packaging. If you throw away the bubble mailers you've been using and replace them with compostable mailers, your bubble mailers still end up in the trash. It's better to use your disposable packaging than throw it away without any use. Once you've run out of plastic packaging, it's time to buy new, eco-friendly packaging.

2. If you're on a budget: Let's be honest, most of us don't have tons of money to be throwing around on packaging. My favorite inexpensive eco-friendly swap is envelopes. I think envelopes look a lot nicer than bubble mailers, and they are very cheap. You can buy 50 for under $15.

3. If you have a little more to spend, most of your plastic packaging can be swapped for eco-friendly versions. You can get compostable cello bags, compostable tape, compostable or recyclable bubble mailers, etc.

4. Make everything recyclable. You probably include lots of recyclable things in your orders without even noticing. For example, your business cards and thank you notes go in the recycling! The more paper you use in the place of plastic, the more of your packaging is recyclable!

5. Make it reusable: Packaging is usually meant to be thrown out, but it doesn't have to be! Consider using cloth bags to pack up your product instead of plastic bags! Use stickers that can be repositioned instead of tape! The possibilities are endless.

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Above, I listed everything you can do to make your packaging as sustainable as possible. The thing is, when your package gets to it's new home, you can't control whether your buyer recycles, reuses, and composts your packaging. It's always convenient to just throw something in the trash, and it is likely that your buyer will do just that.

To avoid all of my efforts to make our packaging sustainable go to waste, we include a note in each order encouraging our customers to reuse and recycle all of our packaging! It's easy to write this message on the back of a business card or include it in your thank you note. If people see your kind message encouraging them to reuse and recycle, they are less likely to dump all of your sustainable packaging in the trash.

I hope you guys enjoyed this article! Stay tuned for more on lowering the environmental impact of your shop :)