Make your Shopify store eco-friendly: plastic to paper > Jan. 05

Happy New Year from The Early Checkout team! 🥳

New year. New time to start fresh. So let’s talk about a trending topic that will be key to refreshing your business engine: sustainability.

Thing is, it’s hard to determine the differences between helpful and unhelpful sustainability practices. And what small business owners can actually do.

Well, we’ve identified one practice all sellers can do that makes a big positive impact: going from plastic to paper packaging.

There are a few steps to get paper packaging in place, but if you do, you’ll be doing your part in our quest to help the environment, your brand will be recognized for it, and you’ll be ready for any regulation changes that could be coming in the near future.

Come on down to today’s Deep Dive to learn how to go paper! 📁

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Make Your Shopify Store Eco-Friendly by Going from Plastic to Paper

The biggest benefit of paper packaging is it can be curbside recycled. Producing sustainable packaging ain’t easy, so for a lot of sellers, the best they can do is provide packaging that can be recycled.

But paper can be made with 100% recycled paper and up to 95% of post-consumer waste, so using recycled paper packaging is doubly helpful to the environment!

However, paper packaging isn’t right for every business. Here are a couple of considerations to bear in mind:

• Your sustainability goals: if you’re focused on reducing your carbon footprint, will going from plastic to paper work for or against that goal?

• Functionality: does your packaging need to be waterproof? If so, paper wouldn’t be very good, would it!?

• Expenses: paper is considerably more expensive than plastic - could you afford to change?

If you think you could use paper packaging, let’s start with the first step: choosing the right types of paper to pack your products proudly.

Choosing the Right Paper Packaging

See where you’re using plastic in your business to know where you can possibly make some swaps.

There are 3 types of paper to choose from (listed in order of sustainability):

1. Maximum-recycled post-consumer paper: this is recycled paper. The most eco-friendly you can use, but is the weakest

2. Next-generation fibres: natural fibers produced from agricultural waste instead of trees

3. Virgin Paper Made with Certified Sustainable Trees: Certifications help assure virgin paper is not coming from ancient and endangered forests, and the trees were grown in ways that respect the environment

Paperboard is another option, which is a combination of paper and cardboard (has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?).

When choosing the right paper packaging for your business, consider your budget and how durable you need the packaging to be. But also how these packagings fit into your overall sustainability plan.

The Cost of Paper

Here are average prices for some of the most common paper packaging (medium-sized):

• Paperboard mailers: $114 for 500 mailers

• Bubble mailers: $15 for 25 mailers

• Packing paper: $24 per roll

• Paper pouces: $60 for 100. For products with low to mid-barrier requirements, such as supplements, chocolates, coffee, and more.

Asia-made, non-traceable packaging is typically designed to be as cheap as possible.

It’s probably not feasible for most brands to swap everything to paper. So it’s best to think about which packagings you can swap.

Paper Swaps to Try

These are the most common plastic usages and their paper alternatives:

The most cost-effective way to make the change from plastic to paper is to use a mixture of packaging techniques based on your products.

For example, some brands use the same rolled shape of their apparel but use paper to wrap fully around the product. Like a burrito! 🌯

The 7 Steps to Go from Plastic to Paper

Paper packaging logistics is different from poly in the operational steps. With this in mind, you need to prepare your procurement, warehouse, and fulfillment teams ahead of your transition from poly to paper packaging.

Step 1: Increase Storage Space (or Decrease Order Volume) 🏭

Paper typically takes up more space than plastic, so be prepared to either use more space or new spaces, or decrease how much inventory you order.

Step 2: Build Supply Chain Redundancy 🔗

Many brands are transitioning to paper, so there could be shortages. It’s best to have backup materials on hand to prevent delays.

Step 3: Use Shorter Inventory Cycles 🔄

Some brands will buy more than one year of their poly packaging needs at a time to manage supply chain risks, reduce unit costs, or both.

We recommend purchasing so that you are holding six months or less of your paper packaging needs. Paper has a shorter shelf-life than poly products, particularly in extreme temperatures or humidity.

Step 4: Train Your Fulfilment Team to Work With Paper 🧑‍🏭

Adjusting to new material will require a learning curve for your team.

Handling is different, as is size ordering, sealing packages, sticking shipping labels, and using void fill and hangtags.

Step 5: Test Shipping 🚢

Ship tests are a small set of sample shipments that utilize the new packaging, shipped to people who can give you good feedback on the packaging once it arrives.

Step 6: Transition to Paper Over Time 🕒

Don’t go all paper all at once! You’ll prevent many losses and mistakes by transitioning pieces of your packaging one at a time.

For example, focus on your smaller mailers first, as smaller paper mailers tend to have a more 1:1 comparable performance to a poly mailer. Then, work your way up in mailer sizes over time.

Step 7: Measure Results and Business Impact 📈

Your target results are based on your business sustainability and business performance goals.

You want to help the planet and keep in line with upcoming regulatory changes, but you must also keep profitable. So work with where you are now and grow if it makes sense.

Alright, that’s all we’ve got for today. We hope you enjoyed this issue of The Early Checkout!

See you next week!

Inspiration for today’s Deep Dive came from Ecoenclose.

The Early Checkout Team

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