Salazar Packaging in the News – E-commerce and Subscription Packaging One thing you can count on is that business is ever evolving and changing. That is especially true of relatively new businesses such as subscription boxes, as well as virtually every form of e-commerce packaging. We...
The Cost of Custom Printed, Branded D2C Packaging Most of the people who call or email us have one key question on their minds: how much is this going to cost? Since we have many different products and even more variables, we can’t refer to...
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We have spent a great deal of time suggesting the idea of “right sizing”, which is essentially only using as large of a shipping container as is truly needed for any product being shipped. Minimizing the size of a shipping box is green and economical because it also minimizes everything that goes along with it such as the necessary void fill and tape used to seal the box.
Disturbing Trend – Minimum Allowable Box Size
Two months ago we found out about a major electronics retailer who instituted an 8” cube minimum box size. Keep in mind that an 8” cube box is actually EIGHT times larger and eight times the waste compared to a 4” cube box. Then, just a week ago a large ladies accessory retailer notified their suppliers and vendors that they too had adopted a new “minimum allowable inbound shipping container.”
It appears this policy is designed to eliminate product loss because smaller boxes have a tendency of becoming lost or damaged in a high volume receiving environment at many large retail operations. This policy is not very positive in terms of packaging sustainability but perhaps it is necessary and important.
Greener Options
In the spirit of “you can’t fight city hall,” perhaps the best we can do is offer some suggestions to minimize the negative green aspects of this change, as well as minimizing the cost.
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Eco Bags is one of our newest customers but I think most would agree they are not band wagon jumpers in the area of reusable or sustainable packaging. In fact, they are often credited as having helped to build the wagon for others, because they’ve been suppliers of reusable shopping bags and other green products for over twenty years. They know green and live it on a daily basis including reusing packaging as often and in every way possible.
Both materials can be excellent eco-friendly packaging. Paperboard packaging is what you see on a FedEx or USPS style flat mailer envelope, or a typical cereal box. By comparison corrugated board has fluting and is what a standard brown box is made of.
The line used to be fairly clear – paperboard was used for primary/retail/display packaging and corrugated was used strictly for secondary packaging such as for shipping boxes simply expected to get products from point A to point B.
As paperboard has become thicker, while corrugated has grown thinner, and both materials are engineered better and more visually appealing, you now see paperboard being used often for shipping purposes such as in mailers, tubes and other structures. There is also growing trend to use corrugated for retail packaging for its “greener look” (see image below).