ECO PACKAGING
APRIL 7TH, 2021
As mentioned in yesterday’s post, environmentally friendly packaging is a real interest of ours, and it’s a struggle to find solid solutions which aren’t just green-washing matters. We need real solutions but there aren’t many companies out there it seems. Well, at least yet any way.
As you can see from the photo above from our packing this morning, we have a couple of things in our armoury at the moment.
First, we have a regular need for thin film packaging materials to bag up bulk manufactured goods that arrive without display packaging. We thought about ditching the protective packaging all together but after trials, the products really do pick up dirt in every stage of the store/pick/pack/ship process (let alone if it needs to be sold again) and customer feedback indicated that some protection was necessary.
It took a long time but we eventually found an answer in the food industry. Vegware manufacture different sized pockets made from cornstarch that are really very attractive and are plant-based and compostable. They’re not cheap, per unit, but they’re good stuff, so whether it ends up in a compost bin or in landfill, it won’t be around for long and won’t leach chemicals into the environment either.
The great thing about the Vegware packaging is that you can seal it with a standard heat sealer you’d normally use for lay flat tubing, just turned down quite a bit. You can see one of our slide whistles packaged up below.
Next, we have experimented with a range of different box companies over the years, and one of our favoured supplies is a fully recycled, non bleached, cardboard mailer. They’re recyclable and tabbed so they largely hold themselves shut too, meaning less tape needed.
To secure things, we’ve found a recycled, and recyclable brown paper parcel tape which seems to have good credentials. It certainly works well for packaging where you don’t need much tape, but wouldn’t be ideal for larger packages as it doesn’t stick well to itself for some reason.
Being a bit OCD here we like the uniform result of box & tape. It’s really quite sturdy too so no problems in transit.
The trickiest one has always been documents enclosed envelopes. We prefer to use them, especially for international post where an invoice needs to be accessible for customs. We have a current solution, but it’s not perfect.
We found a supplier called Tenzalopes that make a ‘Green’ product. Originally touted as biodegradable, we got unnaturally excited about finding it. However, after some digging (and now acknowledged on their product) the film is actually oxo-degradable, which means that it’s really just a thin form of plastic which breaks down quickly. This, isn’t really good enough for us as it throws up all kinds of additional problems, so we’re in the process of finding another way. The company also never got back to us about the material used in the backing sheets so we’re thinking this is a dead end for us, but battle on we will!
I suspect we’ll probably use this for international orders but find another solution entirely for domestic post, probably some form of fully compostable laser sticker, (or a pen - remember them!) but the jury’s out on this at the moment. If you’ve got any ideas on this front, please do get in touch!
We’ll be blogging more on the different eco-packaging we’re trialling out very soon, and we’ll also get some of the packaging available to buy in the shop in small quantities so if any other people that need such things can try them out without having to commit to massive minimum order quantities like we have had to!