Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic most people have tried their best to stay at home. This includes socializing online, working from home, and ordering needs and wants from services such as Amazon, Ebay, Newegg, DoorDash, GrubHub, and many more. If people are ordering more things online, then that means there is more packaging materials used to supply this demand. If these companies worked on more environmentally friendly packaging, they could reduce their carbon footprint. While this is an obvious reason to use more eco-friendly packaging, it is more important now than ever to use more sustainable packaging. Due to the covid-19 pandemic there is an influx of people ordering needs and wants online which means there is also an influx of packaging materials being created, used, and thrown away. This is causing an increase in plastic pollution. During this pandemic, even if we are not going outside as much as we were before, we still need to take care of the planet we live on.
Even if a company is not interested in protecting the environment, their customers probably are. In 2017, Suzanne Shelton, president and CEO of The Shelton Group, a marketing and research firm focused on energy and the environment, said that “Millennials are pushing companies to make a positive impact on the world because they believe global problems are too big for individuals to solve.” Suzanne later adds, “But that doesn’t mean Millennials don’t care about the environment. In fact, they worry more about climate change than other Americans.”1 Suzanne lists some statistics about how most Millennials care about the environment but feel like they can’t do anything about it and look to the big corporations to take action. Suzanne then finishes with, “That gives companies a real opportunity. Help the planet, help your business.”1 So clearly, from a financial standpoint alone, there is a benefit to companies being eco-friendly besides just saving the planet.
Eco-friendly packaging is designed with minimalism in mind. They are designed to offer protection for the items they contain, while also being designed to be less bulky and use less materials. The result of this is, not only a packaging option that is good for the environment, but also means that the packages will weigh less and cost less to ship and you can ship more of them than you could with normal traditional packaging.
Eco-friendly packaging is far more versatile and better for humans than ordinary packaging. Environmentally friendly packaging materials were once limited, but in this age they are more available and can be overall cheaper to use. The same packing material can be used to pack a variety of products and are very re-usable. Ordinary packaging is produced from synthetic and chemical ridden materials making it harmful for both the consumer and the manufacturers. Eco-friendly packaging is not made from these harmful materials and are healthier for everyone.
In conclusion, there are many reasons to use eco-friendly packaging that will be beneficial to the environment, the consumer, and the finances of the company. If companies were to adopt more eco-friendly packaging, then they would benefit in more ways than one.
Works Cited:
Survey: Millennials Less Likely to Recycle, But More Likely to Buy From Companies that Go Green
Essay by: Jacob Jones
Arizona State University
