THE ART OF PACKING + SHIPPING SUSTAINABLY
I’ve had myriad conversations and delved deeply into researching the best ways to package and ship sustainably leading up to our launch. To be honest, before delving into it, I thought for sure I was going to choose “compostable everything” for all of my packing and shipping products, but on closer observation, and seeing how the domino effect that packing and shipping takes on after it leaves your own hands and is out there in the world, I did take a mindful pause in that decision, and you can read about how that decision changed for me in our blog titled THE ART OF SHIPPING SUSTAINABLY.
Here at THE BEAUTIFUL EARTH, we are honoring shipping as another art form that may take longer and cost more for us to package and send to you in a sustainable way, but we are happy to embrace and make this a fun activity in our office and warehouse.
OUR INCENTIVE FOR YOU TO CARRY ON THIS NEW SHIPPING TRADITION:
For every customer of ours who takes a photo/vid of themselves reusing their poly mailer (i.e. a pic/vid of themselves in the Post Office line, at Fedex, UPS, etc.) and/or every customer putting their poly mailer in one of the local Thin Film Bins in their city, we will give them an extra 10% off of their next purchase.
Post, tag us, and we’ll DM you a discount code.
For a list of your nearest Thin Film Bins go to:
https://search.earth911.com/
REELS AND PHOTOS ON HOW WE SHIP uploaded from our IG.
Let’s take one of our hoodies here at The Beautiful Earth. Say we pack that hoodie up in a compostable mailer. That mailer usually arrives at its destination a little tattered and beaten-up because it’s made of this incredibly, earthy matter that is compostable (which is awesome, of course!)…but then the receiver has to then take that tattered compostable mailer and either put it in their own compost or try and reuse it, which it’s usually too beaten-up to continue on another journey…
So most times, that compostable mailer gets placed into the standard recycling bin, at best, and its journey is over.
Now let’s look at a recycled/recyclable poly mailer. If we pack up that same hoodie in that type of poly mailer, it will 99.9% of the time arrive intact. And if the receiver opens it with scissors along its edge, it can be reused on their next shipment out, and then reused by that receiver, and so on, and so on. The recycled/recyclable poly mailer has many lives, and then when it’s finally at its end, it can then be placed in what is called a “Thin Film Bin” and there are bins in every city; you just have to become aware of where they are.
And that Thin Film Bin takes the poly mailer and safely recycles it.
For me, the recycled/recyclable poly mailer felt like a better way to create long term sustainability. Both choices do get recycled at the end which does take time, energy, and creates a carbon footprint to some degree, but the poly mailer has many lives and the compostable mailer has usually one.
It might sound cooler or hipper to use a compostable mailer (and I am definitely not advocating that there is anything wrong with using a compostable mailer. I think for the right, mindful consumer, it is a wonderfully sustainable choice) but in actuality, for most, the carry-through to composting it stops short of the action needed…whereas one recycled/recyclable poly mailer can do the job of many, over and over again, and then be recycled.
The one caveat is getting customers to re-use the poly mailer and then at the end of its run, relying on the last customer left holding the bag (every pun intended!), they must then get the mailer to a Thin Film Bin.
This is where we step in to help with a lovely incentive:
For every customer of ours who takes a photo/vid of themselves reusing their poly mailer (i.e. a pic/vid of themselves in the Post Office line, at Fedex, UPS, etc.) and/or every customer putting their polymailer in one of the local, we will give them an extra 10% off of their next purchase.
Post, tag us, and we’ll DM you a discount code.
For a list of your nearest Thin Film Bins go to:
https://search.earth911.com/
