Thuiswinkel.org offers handle for sustainable e-commerce packaging

A little webshop today takes the environment into account. But how do you actually do that, and what possibilities are within reach? Margreeth Pape, sustainability adviser at trade association Thuiswinkel.org explained a new study in her presentation at Empack 2016.

First of all, according to Pape, it is important to distinguish between different webshops. "For instance, the challenges for small webshops are very different from those for huge players in the market, and online shops that mainly sell stuff for your living room have different problems from shops that mainly have electronics on their shelves."

And there are quite a few webshops in the Netherlands. "It is expected that almost 18 billion euros will be spent in online shops in the Netherlands by the end of 2016. In total, some 250 million parcels are sent every year, which is an increase of two billion compared to 2015." According to Pape, this growth is mainly due to consumer confidence in online purchases and the economic recovery. The 2.2 per cent growth in retail is almost entirely due to the growth of e-commerce.

But that improvements can be made for everyone is clear. "Thereby, the biggest challenges lie in the over-packaging of products, the separate packaging of offline and online products and the little reuse of packaging," says Pape.

Handbook
To give webshop owners a handle in choosing the right packaging for their products, Thuiswinkel.org has created a Handbook Sustainable Packaging, which will be explained for the first time today during the presentation. An interactive guide can be viewed via the trade association's website, highlighting various examples of sustainable packaging. "For example, a solution for small webshops could be to work with shipping packaging with variable fill height. That way, you cut off the edges and thus ship less air. However, this is manual work, and thus not feasible for the bigger players in the market."

Pape reiterates that there is no one-size-fits-all solution for more sustainable packaging in the e-commerce industry. "It is especially important for online shops to look at what is a suitable solution for them, and with this guide we at Thuiswinkel.org hope to provide a handle in this." According to Pape, what should be kept in mind above all is the fact that sustainability is a combination of ecology, economy and functionality. "As long as you incorporate those three points in your packaging, it's a win-win situation for everyone," he says.

This article previously appeared on VerpakkingsProfs. Curious about more news and background articles on Empack? You can find them here.