Becoming Eco-Friendly in eCommerce: 10 Useful Tips
With the rapid development of eCommerce, digital marketing and climate change, sometimes it might feel as if we couldn’t escape the ratio of our carbon footprint; especially, if you are a growing business that would like to contribute without compromising your sales, quality or vision.
We keep hearing about “carbon footprint” but what is it?
Carbon footprint is the total amount of greenhouse gases produced by our actions, some of which include methane and carbon dioxide. The average person in the United States produces 16 tons a year, equivalent to 4 times higher than the global average (4 tons).
But what if I told you that there are a few things you could do to support sustainability in your field? Here are some tips to help out the planet as a business person:
- Supporting carbon offset programs: your emissions can be minimized by participating or investing individually or as a company in said programs such as reforestation projects supporting carbon sinks, renewable energy and more. Here are some examples on which ones you could fund or be part of:
- Atmosfair: this non-profit organization is mainly notorious for manufacturing offsets for greenhouse gases, one of them being the first carbon-neutral PtL kerosene! They also have many other projects in many different countries, from solar energy, efficient cookstoves, hydropower, negative emissions, etc.
- 3Degrees: is a climate action organization that works with more than 100 countries around the world to provide tailored environmental strategies to help you lessen your impact, they help you implement said strategies, as well as measure and track your emissions.
- FiniteCarbon: developing carbon offset programs since 2009 that protects, restores and sustains forests, they have generated ⅓ of California’s compliance offset supply, amongst their projects, they work with Huna Totem in Alaska which is a corporation made by natives that gives a lot of opportunities to regenerate and protect their land to Alaskan native tribes.
- Optimizing packaging: throughout the recent years, there’s been a lot of development in the ways in which we could reduce our waste production by decreasing the amount of packaging involved in every order, as well as implementing environmentally-friendly materials (biodegradable, compostable or recyclable packaging) or providing reusable shopping bags. Some of the most popular biodegradable materials are bamboo, seaweed, avocado, cork, mycelium, hemp, etc, although it is important to be especially careful in how said items are disposed to avoid the opposite effect.
What is the difference between biodegradable and compostable? Biodegradable refers to the matter that can be decomposed naturally by living organisms such as bacteria, microbes and fungi to be reabsorbed by the environment as a nutrient (ideally) but sometimes, by having contact with certain elements or not being disposed properly, it can potentially transform into toxic gases or chemicals. Compostable instead alludes to materials that decompose biologically without generating any toxic residues and unlike most biodegradables, they normally degrade in a relatively shorter period in comparison, functioning faster and efficaciously as a fertilizer when the conditions of the mix of the compost are met to improve the chemical, physical and biological properties of the soil.
- Implementing carbon-efficient shipping: there are ways to make your services much more sustainable and efficient by using sustainable transportation, reusable boxes, shipping containers and materials as well as setting recycling stations in your shipping space.
- Sourcing eco-friendly products: maybe your business could offer some sustainable products or materials which are rising in demand so you can work on manufacturing an attractive, good quality and as well as much needed product in the market. Trust me, our planet will thank you.
- Encourage recycling: motivate customers and employees to recycle and reduce waste by offering incentives to those eco-friendly partners (discounts, free-samples and combos for customers, bonuses for employees, etc).
- Enforce energy-efficient practices: as we advance in technology, there are new viable sources of energy and small practices that might be able to reduce your company’s environmental impact most effectively. Some examples would be:
- Just by changing to LED or CFL lights you produce the same amount of energy as the incandescent light but with 75 to 80% less consumption of electricity.
- Programmable thermostats and smart lighting also help you reduce costs and pollution as you can adjust the temperature and lighting to your schedule’s convenience.
- Clean and replace all AC and refrigerator filters regularly; dirty filters contribute to your systems working harder which can lead to higher electricity bills and also maintenance costs.
- Power strips are used to automatically turn off any device that might not be operating at the moment but that might be consuming standby or “phantom energy”, saving up to 10% on power on average.
- Purchasing energy-efficient appliances: although they might be a bit expensive in comparison to their not-so-efficient counterparts, over time, the investment pays off as the utility bill decreases. Here you have a list provided by Energy Star.
- Partner with environmental charities: amongst charities that work with nature and climate causes, you have The Nature Conservancy, Rainforest Alliance, Sierra Club, NRDC, these are just some examples, you can research your own as well and donate to the one that resonates the most with you. You can also get inspired by others like 4Ocean which is an eCommerce company that sells apparel, jewelry, and reusable items to support its emission; what is interesting about them is that every product you purchase comes with a promise of retrieving one pound of trash off the oceans, rivers and coastlines. Also, they also educate on our dependency to single use plastics.
- Consider an eCommerce marketplace to resell your used merchandise on lower prices: in order to get rid of the materials that would be otherwise thrown out or gathering dust in a warehouse for God knows how long, how about selling them for a much lower cost so that it is consumed and not wasted? You can also incentivize your customers to return what could be reused in order to get more points on your store.
- Calculate, reduce your carbon emissions AND be transparent about it: especially nowadays, honesty is very much appreciated even if the truth isn’t as great as we hope to be. There’s no better way to know and get on top of what we can change than by actually knowing where are we failing and how can we reduce that damage ourselves. Remember to keep your word on your short and long-term plans for a better reputation AND future. We have been talking about corporations and organizations who dedicate themselves to trace, estimate and prevent said emissions throughout this article yet there’s also an app called Tred that might be useful to have an idea of what you’re dealing with.
Start a product repair program: instead of making your customer buy a whole brand new product, why not open the possibility of getting the one they currently own repaired? You will be opening up a couple of new services (including that particular piece sale) which means more money and all those materials and products will be saved and unwasted.
