adminser Do you want to be more sustainable? This is an important part of the equation. The packaging waste produced by the apparel industry is just as difficult to tackle as eco-friendly fabric and fair trade labor. It is not only the fashion industry that must deal with packaging waste.
Do you want to be more sustainable? This is an important part of the equation. Packaging waste is as important to tackle as eco-friendly fabric and fair trade labor.
Packaging waste is not a problem that only affects the fashion industry. It affects all products today.
Imagine that 150 billion garments are manufactured each year. This means that (take a deep breath) at least 150 billion polybags will be produced every year. Each garment is protected and wrapped from harm as it travels from the factory to its final destination. We can also assume that millions of bags, whether plastic or not, are produced each year to ship the pre-wrapped clothing or send it off with a client from a shop.
As stated above, the purpose of packaging is simple, if not innocent. It’s to protect a valuable product against damage during transport. The packaging is required both in the pre-consumer stage of the development of apparel products (what the customer doesn’t see) and the sales phase, which is the phase that the consumer will be interacting with.
Boxes packaging for pre-consumer goods involves the first step of wrapping textiles and trimmings in order to ship them to factories safely without any water damage. It is then necessary to wrap finished garments safely in polybags before sending them overseas. It is difficult to avoid protective packaging in these stages of textiles and apparel production, as damaged materials can lead to canceled orders.
Plastic and cardboard/paper are used in pre-consumer packaging. Plastic is currently the only packaging material that can protect materials from liquid or water damage. Styrofoam is a subset of pre-consumer packaging plastic. It is used for safeguarding harder product elements, such as buckles on bags and zippers on sweatshirts, from scratches, etc. All garments, handbags, and shoes are covered with their plastic.
Patagonia is a pioneer of sustainable fashion practices. They tried to eliminate polybags but found that garments were damaged without them. This resulted in financial and environmental costs. A damaged garment is far more wasteful than a plastic polybag.
Plastic bags can be recycled if customers and companies make an effort to bring them to the appropriate recycling drop-off locations, which are few and far between.
These pre-wrapped packaging are usually shipped in cardboard boxes with tape that hopefully gets recycled. How many trees do we cut down every year to make cardboard? And how is the tape recycled?
You get the idea. There is a great deal of plastic behind all our clothes.
Next, we’ll look at packaging for consumers.
Packaging for consumer products is designed to provide both protection and a visual experience. Pretty bags and decorative shoe boxes have become an integral part of brand identity, which customers expect when purchasing new clothing. Many of these bags and shoe boxes are made from paper and can therefore be recycled. However, brands may want to ensure that the paper quality, handles, and colorants do not make recycling single-use retail packaging difficult.
According to reports, the growth of online shopping is responsible for the increase in clothing purchased every year. We are seeing a rise in the use of plastic packaging by brands. E-commerce can only be blamed if it has indeed helped us produce more garments and, with them, polybags, shopping bags, and shipping containers. It is important to note that brick-and-mortar stores still receive garments and footwear individually. They are unpacked and then rebagged with tissue paper in the paper or plastic bags mentioned above with logos. This is equivalent to branded packaging received from online orders.
Some companies are adopting new technologies and ideas for packaging that is more environmentally friendly.
Compostable envelopes are one exciting innovation. They can be used to replace plastic envelopes. The compostable bags claim to decompose in a compost. However, this is only true if you remove all non-compostable stickers from the compostable packaging and place them into a compost. The bags must be placed in compost for them to biodegrade. This plastic-like material, if placed in regular trash, will behave like plastic and sit in landfills for years.
Compostable mailers are not a sustainable option. Companies that switch to them need to inform their customers of this fact. Otherwise, they could be accused of greenwashing.
Can companies use polybags made from compostable material? Perhaps SKU numbers can be stamped on bags using biodegradable ink instead of being placed on each individual wrapped garment as stickers? Why not?
When it comes to shipping pre-wrapped clothing, recycled paper is the most effective and easy-to-adopt way to go. We could save trees by sourcing paper packaging from recycled paper, like some grocery stores.
The first plastic bags made from recycled material aren’t available yet. However, according to Good on You, the rating site Fashion For Good has launched “The Circular Plastic Bag Pilot” in partnership with Adidas C&A Kering Otto Group and PVH Corporation in an effort to reduce polybags’ use and impact in the fashion industry.
Finisterre is another brand that Good on You mentions using packaging with innovative materials. The outdoorsy brand uses Leave No Trace mailbags and garments made of unbleached pulp. These are biodegradable and recyclable and can be recycled.
Finisterre was the first company to adopt this incredible material technology. Can these bio-innovations be produced on a scale of 150 billion per year?
Bscly, an athleisure startup, has adopted another innovative packaging technique. Bscly packages its clothing in 100% compostable boxes made of sugarcane fiber, a raw material that grows faster than trees and helps absorb CO2 out of the air while returning nutrients to the soil on which it is grown. Bscly’s molded fiber box is simple and has a wordmark debossed on it. However, again, the company needs to alert its customers that they need to compost. We have not yet contacted the brand to find out if sugarcane decomposes in landfills.
These solutions are not only promising but also imperfect. Plastic is a pressing problem, and so is deforestation. We welcome any innovation using other renewable materials.
