Bundling E-Commerce Shipments

With e-commerce increasingly central to our lives, consumers are finding convenience is all the more important. That’s why shopping online with Amazon, Walmart and Target, sites that allow you to have your purchases delivered in boxes right to your doorstep, is becoming more and more popular. And now Amazon and Target are asking customers to opt to have purchases grouped together in weekly shipments, as opposed to on-demand shipping, to consolidate the amount of packaging and lower the carbon footprint of what they receive. So, if you don’t need what your ordering on a deadline, the bundled shipment option is an easy choice.

Fortunately, conscientious consumers don’t have to worry about using too much packaging: corrugated packaging used to ship your goods are not only recyclable, but chances are the box has almost 50% recycled content. Indeed, paper has an astonishingly impressive recovery rate of over 68%. In 2018, Americans recovered and recycled corrugated cardboard at rate of 96 percent. The EPA writes that in 2015, corrugated boxes also represent the largest single category of recycled product, with 92.3 percent of boxes recycled out of 28.9 million tons of recycling in 2015. In other words, reusable boxes aren’t a problem in a population that knows how to recycle them. And boy do we know how to do it.

So, if you want your purchases as soon as they’re available, don’t sweat the number of boxes—they’ll be put to good use after you’re done. That is, so long as you recycle. And if you are not in a rush, bundling makes sense, too.