How To Make Your Ecommerce Business More Environmentally Friendly
If you own an eCommerce business, that doesn’t mean that you don’t need to be concerned about the environment. A lot of people wrongly believe that because they own eCommerce businesses, they aren’t harming the environment. This belief couldn’t be any further from the truth. Just because you are personally working remotely, that’s not to say that you aren’t indirectly harming the environment when you ship products to clients.
This post will break down and explore all of the ways that you can make your eCommerce business more environmentally friendly:
Packing Materials
If you want to make your eCommerce business more environmentally friendly, then it’s a good idea to invest in eco-friendly packaging for your business’s products. Investing in biodegradable packaging is one of the easiest but best ways of making your business more environmentally friendly. If you are going to do this, then it’s a good idea to leave a note on every package that you ship, making clear that the packaging is biodegradable, so that your customers know exactly what to do with it instead of discarding it in the bin.
Shipping Practices
You also need to adopt more environmentally friendly shipping practices, which could involve working with a courier that has worked to reduce their environmental footprint. It’s very difficult to totally eliminate the harm that’s done to the environment through shipping and delivering items, but there are ways that you can do this. Additionally, if you have any local orders, then it’s a good idea to physically go out and deliver them yourself, on foot. With that said, being that you are running an eCommerce business, it’s very unlikely that you are going to get local orders.
Container Returns
If you aren’t going to invest in more sustainable packing materials (or can’t for whatever reason), then one thing that’s worth considering is encouraging customers to make container returns. A container return is when customers return the vessel used for shipping back to you after the item has been delivered.
Container returns can help you and them to save money, although you do need to be aware that the containers will have to be shipped back to you, which means that you will still harm the environment that way. It’s also worth mentioning that most people won’t return containers, even if you ask them to.
Eco-friendly Products
You should go out of your way to offer clients eco-friendly products. Whatever the products that you sell are, try to find suppliers that offer environmentally friendly ones. You should be aware that products that are more eco-friendly tend to be more expensive because they are harder to produce.
The whole reason that non-eco-friendly products became so popular was because of how cheap they were to produce. Because it will cost you more to find environmentally friendly products to sell, you can then charge more for them on your website or store.
Recycling Policies
You need to adopt recycling policies if you want to help the environment. As will be mentioned in the next point, you need to make your company’s mission statement very clear. You can do this by publishing information about your company’s recycling policies so that other people know exactly how concerned you are about the environment.
Recycling policies must be followed at every level of your business. You can enforce recycling policies by introducing penalties for employees that don’t adhere to them. If you work alone, then make sure that you go out of your way to recycle and that you don’t become lazy and careless.
Company Mission
Your company’s mission statement is one of the first things that customers concerned with the environment will read before they go ahead and buy products from you. The thing with helping the environment is that in many ways, it is a business trend, and can bring in a lot of customers. While it’s also good for the earth, it lines your pockets too.
You can charge more (and therefore make more profits) from selling environmentally friendly goods exclusively than you can ones that harm the environment. With this in mind, publish information about your company’s commitment to the environment and all of the things that you are doing to help it on your website.
You mission is to protect the environment while doing business, image source: Unsplash
Local Suppliers
If you care about the environment and want to make a difference, then it’s a good idea to work with local suppliers. Buying your products locally will mean that there is less of a carbon footprint made by each delivery. You won’t have to have items transported internationally to get to you. You could also consider drop shipping, which is a business model where the seller (you) doesn’t retain any stock, and it is shipped directly from the manufacturer to the buyer.
Making Donations
If you are concerned about the environment on a personal level, then something that’s very admirable (and helpful) that you can do is to make donations to charities. Try to find a charity that appeals to you most, and then make regular donations to it.
You can even post information about the charities that you donate to on your website. With every sale you make, you could ask customers to round each sale up to the nearest whole number, and then donate the extra amount to charity. Donations can help your brand image and make you feel like you are actually helping out the environment.
Community Participation
Lastly, the eco-friendly community is huge. If you are truly concerned with the environment, then it’s a very good idea to participate in it, which you can do by signing up for specific forums and groups and working with them. There are lots of ‘business alliances’ that include members of the eco-friendly community, where they go to talk about different ways of improving and offering more environmentally friendly services. Participating in these communities can help you to learn new ways of caring for the environment and give you an opportunity to network with other people who share your passion.
Taking care of the environment can make you money and help the environment. With that in mind, what’s stopping you from doing it? The practices that you need to adopt and introduce in order to help the environment are all outlined here, and as you can see, they are very straightforward.
