The environmental impact of damaged products

Understanding the role of packaging in environmental impact

The total environmental impact of each e-commerce order is a result of all the different factors. Manufacturing resources, primary packaging, distribution and shipping cycle are all part of the total impact. For example, for a tablet, the shipping cycle (the journey from the distribution center to the consumer) represents approximately 2% of the product's total environmental impact. Of that 2%, packaging materials comprise approximately 15% of the shipping cycle impact, which is approximately 0.003% of the total environmental impact.

Doesn't sound like fertile ground for improving sustainability, right? Wrong.

If a tablet breaks during the shipping cycle because the right protective packaging wasn't used, that tablet's environmental impact doubles.

The resources used to produce a replacement ship it to the consumer, and returning the broken product can more than double the product's sustainability impact. 

Avoiding damage is often the most sustainable thing a manufacturer can do when shipping products.

Even a damage rate of 1% is unacceptable.

Many manufacturers are willing to accept a "reduced" damage incidence of 1-3%. Accepting this percentage of damage seems inevitable, but it shouldn't be. Every damaged product causes an unnecessary waste of environmental resources and damages the relationship with the customer. One electronics manufacturer sold more than 44 million tablets in 2018. If they accept 1% damages, they are willing to risk losing 440,000 customers and doubling the environmental impact of those 440,000 tablets.

 Our protective Packaging Company are dedicated to designing and testing protective packaging solutions that ensure a sustainable and secure shipping cycle.