E-commerce, logistics and packaging: how to be sustainable?

We live in a globalized world, in which consumption habits have been constantly changing. It is a fact that, during the Covid-19 pandemic, many consumers have drastically changed the way they buy products, from the traditional physical form to the virtual form, that is, online. This change in the way consumers buy has required adaptations in the logistics area. Logistics operators, who before the pandemic were accustomed to making deliveries in large batches, have to make increasingly fractional deliveries to individually meet each consumer who buys over the internet, in the modality known as e-commerce or e-commerce. 

In this context, a relevant item enters: the packaging. The batch deliveries use a certain amount of packaging, but when the delivery is fractionated, the amount of packaging multiplies exponentially. It is very common, when receiving a product purchased by e-commerce, realize the large amount of packaging, among cardboard, bubble plastics and other materials. Distributors, to protect the products in the best possible way during the logistics process, often exaggerate the dose, especially for small volume items. If you buy a small bottle of perfume, for example, it is likely that in the packaging that has arrived at your residence it is possible to accommodate a bottle of wine. 

This way of thinking about packaging for e-commerce deliveries is not a Brazilian “privilege.This has occurred worldwide. According to a BBC report from June 2024, according to Nicole Rycroft, executive director of the environmental organization Canopy, which works with companies to preserve threatened forests, “in the first days of e-commerce, products had seven times more packaging than purchases made in physical stores”.“now, they are about four and a half times, but the excess packaging is still large.”  

According to Edrone, in 2024, e-commerce in Brazil exceeded 200 billion in revenue, with an average ticket of almost R$ 500.00 and more than 90 million virtual buyers. Therefore, it continues to maintain the growth trend presented in previous years. These numbers further amplify the amount of packaging consumed and those that will still be, by maintaining the logic of how much larger the packaging better results. 

Some pertinent questions: if packaging has a share in the logistics cost, why waste the opportunity to reduce? Another issue, with so much technology embedded in logistics processes, would not be expected an optimization in the use of packaging? 

Among the possible causes of the use of excess packaging, we can mention the difficulty of unitizing and transporting small objects.It is also worth mentioning that, as much technology as one has, due to the requirements for faster deliveries and difficulties in generating demand, often the operation has to be “virar” with what it has available and, of course, nothing like a family size packaging! 

E-commerce cannot be held responsible for all the waste generated from its packaging, however, it is up to companies in the sector to seek sustainable alternatives to solve this problem.