Does ecommerce generate more packaging waste than traditional retail distribution? With ecommerce sales growing in the U.S. at 14.6% in 2015, according to Internet Retailer, it’s time for some answers. A new whitepaper by environmental and policy packaging group Ameripen brings clarity to the murky topic of sustainability for ecommerce packaging and identifies five opportunities for improvements.
Published in January 2017, Ameripen’s free 15-page whitepaper «Optimizing Packaging for an E-commerce World» succinctly outlines the unique sustainability challenges for packaging in the ecommerce channel.
The conclusion? First: optimizing packaging for ecommerce may very well look different than design for traditional retail, due to the different demands of the respective distribution chains.
Second: opportunities to invest in further development of the packaging supply chain for e-commerce and subsequently omni-commerce scan the breadth of distribution channel and solutions will come only through industry collaboration and transparency.