AD | We’re all making efforts to do what we can to be more sustainable, and some things are easier than others. Reducing plastic, reusing things the most we can and recycling are all very easy things without much effort. Ditching plastic in your home completely? Not so easy. But it’s not all about what we do with things when we need to dispose of them, what about how to online shop more sustainably?
Let’s face it, most of us shop online more than we do in stores now, and that’s a trend that’s only going one way. And after living through the pandemic and having no option other than shopping online for the majority of things, I think we all have a heightened awareness of how much we depend on it now.
But what about the sustainability side of things? Shopping online is a lot of packaging, a lot of deliveries, a lot of returns with even more packaging and emissions. There’s a lot to think about. But there are some small ways that you can think about doing it in a more eco-friendly way, whether you’re a seller, shopper or both.
Featured Image: Photo by Packhelp on Unsplash
How To Online Shop More Sustainably
Shop fully sustainably
I’m putting this first because I know it’s the most obvious, it’s also not an option for a lot of people. Buying from places that ethically source materials is wonderful. It’s also wonderful if they produce in *insert your own country here* rather than exploiting workers in unfair conditions and pack and ship everything with eco-friendly materials.
Wonderful, but expensive. And while I’m sure that’s the goal for many, it’s certainly not 100% attainable for the average person on this street. If you’re in a position where you can make those changes, that’s amazing. If you’re not, the rest of the list is for you.
Click & collect rather than home delivery
You’re ordering online, possibly with more than one delivery, and someone is spending their day driving around from house to house making dozens of deliveries a day.
Most people have places that provide click and collect within a very short distance from their house, I have two places with a 5-minute walk from my home. I know that change sounds small, but think about how many fewer miles need to be driven if that driver needs to drop off at a handful of collection points rather than all of the houses they’d visit.
And a lot of companies offer free/ cheaper shipping for click and collect too, so it’s an eco-friendly swap that could end up saving you some money in the long run too.
Packaging
Packaging is one I know we can all relate to. I promise at least one of the following sentences has left your mouth before:
‘Look, they sent a box THIS big for something THIS small’
‘Have you SEEN how much plastic is here?’
And the final, ‘How much space is this going to take up in the bin?’
Packaging is something we all have to live with when it comes to ordering online. But over the last year or so, I’ve really taken note of how companies ship their products. Last time I ordered from ASOS, I was extremely happy that it came in a box rather than their awful plastic bags. But each individual item still comes in a plastic bag, one that can’t be recycled in a lot of places. In contrast, Zara ship everything in cardboard boxes and the items aren’t individually wrapped, only a sheet of loose tissue paper. Everything can be recycled, and the minimalistic packaging actually feels more luxurious to open than a plastic bag.
I know you can’t control how companies choose to pack their items, but you can choose where to shop and who to support based on details like this.
And if you’re reading this as someone who has an online store, it’s little things like this that people appreciate. You can get nice looking custom printed boxes and use eco-friendly materials to pack boxes fairly easily now, it’s much easier to dispose of for the shopper and every small change like this helps.
E-commerce sites
This one is more for the sellers than the shoppers. But take a look at how your web hosts work towards sustainability. The site you’re currently reading is hosted by Lyrical Host, and each year on your anniversary trees are planted to work towards offsetting the emissions running your site creates. It’s small, but it’s a nice touch. And it was something that made me feel good about choosing them originally (there’s a link to their site in my sidebar if you want to learn more).
Obviously, I’m only with one company, and I think they’re great. But I’m sure others also do something similar, it’s an area worth looking into if you run your own online business.
Research returns
I can’t remember how I’ve discovered this, but sometimes your returns go straight to landfill. Which is horrifying (Google your favourite store + landfill policy). Especially if you’re between sizes or a different size in every store and often have to order more than one size, resulting in a lot of returns, please look into the returns process for your favourite stores.
Better still, if you’re shopping from somewhere that has a store near you, try to return to store. You’ll often see it going straight back on the rails there rather than a warehouse.
If you order regularly, a lot of companies also now allow you to pack returns from multiple orders in one box, allowing you to use the least amount of packaging when packing up your returns.
Hopefully, you love everything you’ve ordered, but if you don’t, these are a few things to keep in mind.
Do you consider any of these things when you’re online shopping? Or do you have any more suggestions to add to the list?
Until next time,
Sophie
Great suggestions Sophie! Overpacking and plastic mailers is a real pet peeve of mine. I love it when brands use fully paper mail bags and those dissolvable potato packing peanuts. Picking click and collect is a really good idea, I need to start doing this as I do have some nearby locations xx
Violethollow.com
I try as best as I can to keep the packaging to reuse them for something else but man it can be hard when they wrap the outer in plastic or cover it in tape. Doing pickups instead is a great tip!
These are good tips! I can’t think of the last time I’ve ordered something and it’s come in plastic packaging – most places here have swapped over to the paper alternative to bubble wrap which is good to see – but I haven’t been ordering a lot of clothes online so that impacts what I’m seeing I guess. Been a few months since I’ve ordered clothes online, I think they did come in plastic, but books and other things for the kids and their clothes that I’ve ordered have been more eco friendly 🙂
Hope your week is off to a good start 🙂
That was a great reminder to do some research on how different companies we order from handle returns. It really is crazy how so many returns are handled!
Great post, Sophie! How horrifying is it that some orders get thrown out! I heard this happens with a lot of perfume and makeup places which I kind of understand but it’s still so sad! Thanks for sharing these tips! x
Lynn | https://www.lynnmumbingmejia.com
We’re not allowed to return cosmetics in the UK, but I think some of the opened makeup returns become testers and I’ve seen Sephora staff say before that they go in a staff bucket that they can take stuff from so they can get to know the most products as possible to help customers, which is great. And it makes sense that stuff like cosmetics can’t go back on sale. But it’s awful that clothes are simply disposed of because you potentially got the wrong size!
These are some excellent tips – especially keeping track of how the companies package their shipped items. I’ll have to research the return policies, too – thanks for bringing that up.