Hyderabad: Are e-commerce companies packaging responsible? A look at your last online order might put things into perspective.
Anything purchased online comes covered in layers of plastic and cardboard. Sheets of plastic, bubble wrap, air pouches and cardboard ensure that the product is carefully protected, but this comes with an ecological cost. Customers online have taken note of this and have begun calling out e-retailers to package responsibly or start taking back and reusing their cartons.
“I am imploring Amazon to stop excessive packaging. I ordered two quantities of the same item and they came in separate large cardboard boxes with multiple plastic packaging,” read a tweet of Shrabonti Bagchi. Her tweet has gone viral with 2,700 retweets, and is now fetching reactions from other online shoppers who are sharing similar instances of excess packaging for the smallest of things.
Experts from the recycling industry say that while most of the packaging is recyclable, e-shops make no effort to reclaim all the waste they add to the ecosystem. “None of the FMCGs or the e-shopping leaders are investing in safe disposal of their packaging material. Once the package is out in the market, the companies don’t keep tabs on it to retrieve and recycle,” says Roshan Miranda, founder of Waste Ventures India.
While bubble wrap is 100 per cent recyclable, and fetches a good market price of Rs 20-30 per kilogram, there is no organised collection of it and it may not be recycled. “The carbon footprint of the packaging material may be negligible, but how it reaches the recycling unit and how it is recycled is where the problem arises,” says Mohit Kumar of Ramky.
Ramky works with the warehouses of Flipkart and Amazon to process the in-warehouse cardboard and plastic packaging that come in from the producers. However, the packages that are sent out to customers are not channelised to recyclers.
Mr Miranda of Waste Ventures adds that many a time the paper mills that recycle the cardboard may be highly polluting and water intensive.
The twitter campaign #TakeItBack also highlights that e-retailing giants do not have options of consolidation. A customer, Prasanta Roy, tweeted that his order of eight fountain pens came with eight bubble wraps.
In India, there is no option to ask for minimal packaging or combined delivery. In the USA, Amazon provides a separate option called ‘consolidate my order,’ which not just helps in getting items on the same date, but also avoids duplication in packaging. But this minimalism is not appealing to all. “Some items require sturdy packaging so we can’t blame Amazon or Flipkart for using more precautionary plastic. If the packaging is less, the goods would be damaged,” says Clinton Antony, an online shopper. “The e-commerce giants have a strong logistics system, so if they start reverse logistics, the whole issue of waste landing with the informal sector would be managed,” says Vishal Kumar, programme manager with a waste management start up firm.
So without compromising on the packaging, if the companies took back the cardboard and plastic through the delivering system, e-commerce could turn much greener.
