As the online retail industry continues to boom, delivery packaging is becoming an ever more important sustainability concern. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, there has been a significant increase in online orders, and with technology constantly developing and improving, this is going to continue to increase.

In an article written by Kayla Jenkins entitled “How has E-Commerce Adapted During the COVID-19 Outbreak?” we see that there has been a 32.4 percent increase in e-commerce sales in 2020 and e-commerce shops as a whole achieved sales in the value of over $270 billion. That is a lot of boxes and packing being used; which will lead to a lot of waste and packaging materials that take hundreds of years to biodegrade.

A lot of companies are guilty of not being sustainable when it comes to packaging. Boxes are unnecessarily being used to ship slightly smaller boxes; styrofoam peanuts are being thrown into boxes and can take up to 500 years to biodegrade. In the United States, about 165 billion packages each year are shipped with cardboard which roughly equates to over one billion trees. In a study carried out by Statista, it states that 77 percent of people who order online prefer packaging that fits the actual size of the product to reduce their impact on the environment.

Over at 2Flow, they have put together an infographic entitled “How to Make Your Logistics More Sustainable with Green Delivery Packaging.” The infographic outlines the environmental impact of packaging; the opportunities that come with having a more green approach; the business benefits of going green; the goals of sustainable delivery packaging;  how to go about making your product delivery packaging more green; and what the business experts have to say on the topic by showing suitable case study examples.