As the holiday season quickly approaches, thoughts of gifts, decorations, and cheerful holiday parties are running through my mind. Questions of “What to gift? What to hang? What to wear?” quickly turn into “What to buy?!?” I plan to make the majority of my holiday purchases online again this year. Online purchases are being made even easier with the help of mobile shopping and apps like Wanelo and buyable pins on Pinterest

Global B2C e-commerce sales are expected to reach $2,251 billion this year, up 16% from last year. That’s a LOT of items being shipped around the world in protective packaging. Packaging that is then discarded upon arrival at its final destination. Every 30-40 days the average person discards their body weight in packaging. These boxes, bags, and wrappers total 30% of our total trash by volume and 50% by weight. 

 

[bctt tweet=”Every 30-40 days the average person discards their body weight in packaging. #sustainablepackaging”]

Why the Fashion Industry?

The fashion and garment industry has historically been known for their poor sustainability efforts. Textile dyes release harmful metals and chemicals into our aquatic system during the manufacturing process, attributing 20% of the global industrial water pollution according to The World Bank. Today’s ‘throwaway culture’ prevalent in much of the developed world is cause for the ever increasing amounts of unwanted clothing winding up in our landfills. Americans alone attribute 10.5 million tons of clothing to landfills each year. These major sustainability issues have made fashion brands an easy target for critique from environmentally conscious consumers. That doesn’t bode well in today’s global market where a brand’s social purpose influences a customer’s purchasing decisions. In fact, a 55% majority of online consumers reported that they’d be willing to ‘put their money where there heart is’ so to speak, and pay MORE for products or services from companies committed to positive social and environmental impact.

 

[bctt tweet=”55% of online consumers say they’d be willing to pay MORE for products from environmentally conscious companies.” via=”no”]

 

So how can fashion retailers brighten their social and environmental reputation?

By adopting ethical and environmental standards throughout their supply chain. One meaningful change they should make right away is to switch to sustainable packaging. By utilizing sustainable packaging options like 100% recyclable poly mailers, fashion e-tailers can keep their packaging out of the landfills and in recycling centers. Clothing can be easily shipped in a flat poly mailer, while smaller accessories ship well in a poly bubble mailer. Poly mailers can be easily customized to provide striking brand recognition. They typically cost less than their rigid counterparts and create less DIM weight, equaling lower shipping costs! It’s no wonder many clothing companies have already made the switch. 

 

thredUP is Revolutionizing the Fashion Industry

One company is revolutionizing the entire supply chain of clothing and accessories all together. thredUP is a wonderfully simple and sustainable means of putting your old clothes to good use (keeping them out of landfills) and allowing consumers to shop for apparel at lower prices, all while utilizing sustainable packaging! Want to re-purpose your old clothes and get paid for it!? Let thredUP know and they’ll send you one of our 100% recyclable flat poly mailers to fill up and send back to them. But watch out, the bags are pretty B-I-G!! 

 

 

What happens to the items they are unable to resell? They are sent to their recycling partners and turned into products like carpet and pillow stuffing. Nothing goes to waste. They call it upcycling. You can even designate 5% of every purchase you make to be donated to the school of your choice through the ‘thredUP for Schools‘ program. They seriously have so many awesome things happening you’ll have to check them out for yourself at www.thredup.com

 

Want to make the switch to sustainable packaging? You should. Give us a call at 800.535.0039 or send us a message at [email protected] to discuss what packaging would be best for your product. It’s gonna be great.

 

Already made the switch to sustainable packaging? Let me know what impactful changes your company has made so I can gush about you as well. 🙂