We can all recognize the fact that our online shopping-obsessed culture is not healthy for the environment. Every year, we add more and more packaging, e-waste, and barely-used products to our landfills, and there is no end in sight. It’s easy to see the ways that in-store shopping affects the environment, but it’s often harder to see how our online shopping habits can often have an even larger environmental impact.
Online shopping involves packaging, shipping, the costs of running servers and offices for the people that facilitate online stores, and we are buying more online than ever before. While all these elements can be small on their own, they add up to significantly increase online shopping’s environmental impact. Here are four ways that you can start to reduce your online carbon footprint.
#1: Gain Carbon Transparency & Identify Your Biggest Emission Drivers
You can only manage what you can measure. Gaining carbon transparency and understanding your carbon footprint is therefore crucial to make your operations more sustainable.
Software solutions will help you understand your biggest emission drivers, including typical emission hotspots for e-commerce companies such as packaging and logistics.
Knowing where you stand will enable you to identify and implement high-impact actions to reduce your emissions over time.
#2: Switch to More Climate-Friendly Shipping Solutions
The demand for fast deliveries in e-commerce has never been higher. Already today, worldwide freight transport accounts for 8% of global carbon emissions, with last-mile shipping making up a large proportion of this footprint.
Effective ways to reduce the impact of shipping from e-commerce are already available and will continue to grow. Major carriers including DHL, FedEx and UPS have put climate action high on their agenda and offer environmentally-friendly programmes such as paperless invoicing, carbon neutral shipping via carbon offsetting and greener shipping options including bikes and electric vehicles.
You can also reduce last-mile delivery by establishing convenient pick up points near customers or partners so that orders can be dropped off in one stop instead of driving to each customer individually.
#3: Reduce Packaging & Make Unavoidable Packaging More Sustainable
How many times have you received a parcel and asked yourself what is inside such a big box?
Retailers often use standard boxes to ship all items and fill the free space with additional packaging material. Shipping items in smaller boxes will not only avoid unnecessary packaging material and waste, but also saves space on the transport, making it more climate-friendly. Given that packaging makes up 30% of the e-commerce carbon footprint, this is a very important reduction lever for your company.
E-commerce companies can also work towards avoiding non-disposable material such as single-use plastic and, instead, use recycled paper and other material for packaging and shipping. WILDPLASTIC, for example, collects discarded plastic from countries without proper waste disposal or recycling and brings it back into the production cycle by producing new materials and products from the recycled plastic. This saves up to 60% of carbon emissions. E-commerce companies like OTTO are already using shipping bags from WILDPLASTIC and also recycled cardboard boxes to deliver their orders. And then there are also end-to-end packaging partners such as Palamo who has made it its mission to make a lasting change in the way products are packaged, focusing on packaging solutions made of lighter weight and environmentally friendly materials.
#4: Increase Your Energy Efficiency
Sustainability for e-commerce goes beyond shipping and packaging. You should also look at your overall business operations, including the way you run your offices and warehouses.
In fact, electricity usage in your office and warehouses should not be underestimated and can be a key reduction driver for your company. Switching to a renewable energy provider would be the first essential step here, followed by making simple changes such as low energy lighting, reducing the temperature in the office and simply turning off any equipment that is not currently being used. Such behavioural changes will not only significantly reduce emissions but in turn also lower your energy bills - a win-win situation.
Footwear brand Allbirds is not only committed to run on 100% renewable energy for Allbirds owned & operated facilities, but also works closely with its finished good manufacturers on procuring 100% on-site renewables by 2025.
#5: Find Ways to Reduce Customer Returns
Returns currently cost retailers around € 70 billion a year. However, the cost for our planet is even greater: 15 million tonnes of CO2e and 2 million tonnes of landfill waste are created every year from US returns alone.
Research has shown that 30% of consumers purposely order more and return unwanted items when returns are offered for free. Stopping to offer free returns might make customers think twice before ordering additional items.
On top of that, creating detailed product descriptions, including high-quality images and/or videos as well as size guides, will help consumers pick products that they like and that will most likely fit them. Companies such as Mister Spex also offer digital fitting tools, using augmented reality or other technologies, enabling online shoppers to “try on” a product before purchasing it.
You can also look into solutions such as 8returns who offer a software for self-service returns that has a smart rules engine which prevents unwanted returns and offsets the carbon emissions of all remaining returns automatically. Plus, the software also reduces paper waste as paper return labels are no longer needed, and all returns are registered online.
For any returns that cannot be prevented, you should implement sustainable return policies and processes and ban returned items from being destroyed - unfortunately, this is still the reality for many businesses as throwing goods away is cheaper than reselling them.
#6: Start Your Move Towards Circularity & Give Products a Second Life
Speaking of reselling: Companies such as Patagonia, refurbed and Habitus lead by example in giving products a second life.
Typically, products are disposed of after being used for some time. The circular economy aims to extend product life cycles, reduce waste to a minimum and close the loop of supply chains. Establishing a circular system is estimated to halve industrial carbon emissions in the EU by 2050.
You can encourage your customers to become part of the circular economy by providing opportunities to resell used products and buy second-hand ones. Outdoor apparel brand Patagonia, for example, has created Worn Wear: Customers can send in used clothes which are then turned into new products. And companies such as refurbed built their entire business model on extending product lives.
Carbon offsetting is a great way to compensate for emissions that your company cannot yet avoid. You can financially support high-impact climate projects that help to avoid or reduce emissions by, for example, protecting rainforests or helping to scale renewable energy globally.
The big questions still remain unanswered.....
How will we bring all ecommerce companies in one belt and promote them to adopt these sustainable options?
How efficiently can we track our activities keeping an environmental impact's aspect in mind?
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