Paper packaging: once hunter, now the hunted one
Thomas Reiner | 09.07.2020
With new packaging solutions made of flexible corrugated board, eBay wants to offer its 187 million buyers and sellers worldwide new possibilities for more sustainability. The 14 tailor-made storage units are designed to reduce material consumption and empty volume while improving the shopping experience.
eBay’s push comes against the backdrop of growing pressure on online retail to manage its waste. Currently, an average mail order parcel is only half full. The rest is filling material or air. Online retailers are therefore looking for new answers worldwide.
The problems facing e-commerce are its very wide range of required package sizes and solutions. The variety and heterogeneity of the products offered and to be shipped is gigantic. The size, weight and need for protection of the goods vary greatly and often fundamentally.
eBay has approached its solution by determining the required box sizes and material qualities among its sellers. On this basis, 14 tailor-made storage units (SKU) were created, which cover the widest possible range of required packaging solutions, while meeting specific cost, quality and quantity requirements.
To underline the sustainability of the eBay-branded box SKUs, the company ensures that its packaging is FSC-certified and emphasises its recyclability.
According to the platform, the new solution is well received by sellers and buyers alike. In any case, it is a good and right step to address consumers’ concerns about too much packaging and to reduce material consumption.
After all, consumers’ increasing sensitivity to packaging waste does not stop at plastics. Consumers are less and less willing to accept the excessive and unnecessary use of material that they have to dispose of in the end. Fibre packaging is thus increasingly going from being the hunter to the one being hunted.
