Shipping materials are slowly becoming a major issue for e-commerce. Over 87 million kilos of shipping material is produced, per year, according to numbers presented by Recycling Netwerk Benelux. This eco-friendly organization reinforced its own calculations by consulting statistics from Dutch market authority ACM. According to Recycling Netwerk Benelux, these numbers are exclusively parcels for consumers.
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Recycling Netwerk Benelux has also claimed that most of these 84 million kilos consist of cardboard boxes. Another 2 million kilos go towards paper and plastic padding. A smaller 800 thousand kilos is used for plastic bags.
But the waste doesn’t stop in the delivery containers: another 11 million kilos of paper and plastic enters Dutch homes through letters. This mostly includes paper envelopes, alongside 1,5 million kilos plastic shipping covers.
Dutch e-commerce has steadily grown in the past two years. This, in turn, has increased the number of parcels sent by mail, and almost all these products are packed in extra shipping materials.
For instance, to be able to send multiple products as one package or/and as extra protection during transport, many companies use extra shipping materials as protection. A recent limited sample by Mission Reuse, in cooperation with Thuiswinkel.org and the Knowledge Institute for Sustainable Packaging (KIDV), showed that 64% of the 255 consumers surveyed were dissatisfied with the number of shipping materials included with packages.
Dutch consumers overwhelmingly favor reusable shipping materials for packages. Mission Reuse's recent survey shows that 96% of those surveyed would like to be able to choose reusable shipping packaging.
49% would actually like to do so if they had to pay a little more. In case of a deposit on shipping materials, even 73% would choose reusability over single-use. The survey is included in the report "Reusable shipping packaging in e-commerce", which also provides an overview of the market and available innovations.
And precisely in the field of reusability and eco-friendly packaging, Ranpak has released this report informing about the ecological impact of their card boxes and paper wrappings, all of them recyclable or done from recycled materials.
???? If you want to know more about eco-friendly packaging solutions, keep an eye on our coming article about Ranpak and Recycold alliance! ????
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