Online shopping is convenient, you can buy your favorite products easily. However, after the purchase, you will receive not only the product, but also the packaging waste such as tapes, boxes, and plastic bags. Some of the packaging materials are difficult to recycle and will end up in landfills. Furthermore, some products are over-packaged which lead to wasting of more resources.
According to statistics, China consumed about 1.5 billion packaging boxes during 11 November 2017. Assuming the length of a package box to be 20 cm, the total length of these boxes is enough to go around the earth 7.5 times. In Finland, an average consumer produces about 176 pounds of packaging waste per year. And you can see packaging waste is a serious solid waste issue around the world.
In view of this, a Finnish company offers RePack, a sustainable packaging service, which is expected to reduce packaging waste. If you choose to use RePack packaging service when you are ordering, you will receive the goods packaged in RePack. After picking up the goods, just return the empty RePack by dropping it into a postbox without any payment, then the online store can reuse the RePack packaging bag again. After you return the RePack, you will receive a coupon which can be used at online stores that make use of the RePack packaging service.
RePack packaging is made of recycled polypropylene and it protects the goods better than other single-use packaging materials. It can be reused for at least 20 times, it helps reduce carbon emissions by 80% and packaging waste generation by 96%. RePack’s return rate is 75% and it helped avoid the production of 50,000 shopping bags and thousands of kilograms of packaging waste. In case of wear and tear, the broken RePack can also be upcycled into products like backpack.
For now, there are more than 40 online stores using the RePack packaging service. From the viewpoint of store owners, using RePack not only can save packaging costs, but also create an environmentally friendly image.
Sources:
https://www.originalrepack.com/