With more consumers becoming environmentally conscious, sustainability is taking its place as a major driver for businesses. It’s better for the world, and also boosts your brand and your bottom line. Since the eCommerce industry’s carbon footprint is so significant, online sellers are responsible for adopting green business practices. It may seem overwhelming, but you can take small steps, starting with logistics. This is one aspect that will greatly reduce your business’s environmental impact. The impact of eCommerce on the environment Over the past few years, the eCommerce industry has skyr ..read more

After years of ignoring the sector, 2021 was the year that investors finally started to pay attention to the world of sustainable packaging. The past twelve months have seen a number of of investment rounds announced with a focus on innovative materials (algae seems to be having a moment) and single-use packaging. All of this bears witness to the fact that consumers are demanding better, safer, more ethical packaging for their products and brands are listening, all as the pandemic has left us drowning in plastic waste due to the skyrocketing increase in online shopping and food delivery. Below ..read more

In a bid to offer sustainable alternatives to conventional packaging, suppliers are looking to natural materials, including seaweed, for inspiration. With the best scenario being entirely home-compostable products, with easily-recyclable coming second, innovative composition is essential.  Packaging startups are proving to be open to regenerative materials and excited by the opportunity to develop something new. This is why seaweed is having an undeniable moment right now. Capable of growing around 60 times faster than land-based crops and sequestering up to 20 times more carbon per acre ..read more

As the holiday season begins, gift packaging becomes a key consideration for retailers and brands but how can environmental concerns and appropriate gift wrapping be reconciled, if at all? From cellophane to non-recyclable printed gift wrap and everything in between, there are a host of attractive yet damaging packaging options that have become a staple of the holiday season, but it’s time to step up and make the changes that consumers claim to support.  What Are The Best Materials For Gift Packaging? Packaging solutions are a must and therefore it falls to us to select not only the best ..read more

The Surprising Facts About The Commonly Used Gift Packaging A cost-effective, attractive and consumer-pleasing packaging addition, tissue paper (not to be confused with tissues, say, for blowing your nose), has many environmental benefits to recommend it. It’s paper, at the end of the day, so naturally plastic-free, and being a bio-based product, it’s easy to recycle as well, right? The ugly truth is that tissue paper is not easy to recycle and moreover, many recycling centres will actively refuse to take it, meaning that it will end up in landfill.  In the below post, we explore how tiss ..read more

We know that paper is biodegradable, but is paper compostable without exception or are there limitations to be aware of? Being able to proudly proclaim that product packaging is compostable makes for more than simply a savvy marketing trick, it helps the planter as well. But before you rush to add one of the many recognisable icons to consumer products, or worse still, before you believe that they all mean the same thing, it’s vital to understand the limitations of paper composting. Is paper compostable or not? The very short answer here is yes. As a natural product made from plant materials ..read more

It’s no secret that neither incineration or landfill is an environmental solution, but with both still being necessary evils, which is the lesser?  Deciding whether waste is piled high and left to rot over the next century, or burned to offer faster resolution is no easy task. While plenty of incineration projects have been heralded as creating energy and diverting enormous amounts of garbage away from landfill, they are not the green solutions that many have been led to believe. So, what are we supposed to do? We can start by fully understanding and acknowledging the differences and shor ..read more

Our Supplier Spotlight Series shines a light on our outstanding sustainable packaging suppliers. In our inaugural post, we feature Eva Yeh, founder of Yayy.com, a retail food compostable packaging supplier about why she started the company, what her mission is and why the pouch is her star product. WHO: Tell us about you as a person/founder I’m Eva Yeh, founder and CEO of Yayyy.Co. I’ve got years of experience in art direction in both the advertising and tech sectors under my belt. I started Yayyy to provide small merchants and businesses high quality packaging  and pa ..read more

Beauty and cosmetics are going through a major shift when it comes to packaging. Younger consumers, especially Gen Zers, want more sustainable packaging options. While there has been a great deal of innovation when it comes to food retail and food delivery packaging, truly sustainable beauty packaging options are still limited given the many constraints. Packaging that is liquid friendly, anti-leak, anti-microbial and that enables products their skincare performance attributes while also being fairly long-lasting- not quite the same thing as a salad box that a consumer uses for 20 minutes. So ..read more

In this very special series, we are sharing excerpts from Season 2 of the excellent Red to Green Podcast created by host and future food enthusiast Marina Schmidt. The show features in-depth conversations about the intersection of the food tech industry and sustainability. Season 2, titled ‘Plastic Alternatives’, is dedicated to the world of food packaging with a focus on exploring alternatives to fossil fuel plastics and solutions. The below conversation is an excerpt from Red To Green Season 2, Episode 3: ‘Greenwashing – Lifecycle Assessments, BPA linings, & what Tetra Pak doesn’t want y ..read more