Goal

Decide if plastic-free or plastic reduction is the right investment journey, and confidently begin.

EcoEnclose Insights

We have worked with many brands that have started down this path only to end up with 100% recycled plastic packaging instead or develop a dual strategy that includes recycled plastic and recycled paper-based packaging.
 
Assessing how this sustainability initiative will impact your business may lead you to determine whether or not it’s the right choice for you. This is a time- and resource-intensive endeavor: decide whether it’s the best fit for you before you begin.

Relevance & Why It Matters

While paper packaging is increasingly popular and applicable, there are better options for some use cases or companies, and it is not necessarily the most objectively sustainable option in all situations.

Critical Questions & Action Items

Do your sustainability goals hinge on carbon footprint, specifically for Scope 3 and packaging? Paper packaging has a higher carbon footprint than plastic. Is there wiggle room for this within your sustainability goals?

Is there a budget for the higher cost of paper packaging?

Do you have, or are you willing to pay your 3PL for the additional storage space needed for paper?

Are you prepared for the time this transition may take? Depending on the complexity of a business, transition periods can be six months, two years, or longer.

Tools for Step 1

1. Calculate Budget and Storage Implications
2. Review Carbon Implications of Paper vs. Plastic
3. Consider Sustainability Aspects of Inner Packaging Options

What Does Switching to Paper Entail?

Consider the following points to assess the pros, cons, and costs of replacing plastic with paper. Engage stakeholders across your business to get clarity and alignment on these topics. Depending on your assessments of these points, you may consider a combination of paths forward, including:

• 100% recycled plastic

• A combination of recycled plastic and recycled paper

• 100% plastic-free

EcoEnclose helps you to choose packaging options and materials that further your sustainability goals and align with internal needs.

Dive Deeper

Recognize the sustainability tradeoffs:

• Paper packaging will almost always have a (often significantly) higher carbon footprint than a plastic alternative, so the transition will increase your packaging's carbon footprint.

• Paper packaging, when made of recycled content, wins on circularity.

• Additionally, paper packaging does not contribute to ocean plastic pollution. 

Prepare for higher costs:

• Paper is generally more expensive to buy, ship, and store than plastic alternatives. Brands who are most successful in making the transition recognize and budget for this cost increase before embarking on this process. 

Understand functional implications:

• Plastic is extremely durable in transit, but paper packaging can get damaged more easily while in transit if not optimized for your product and tested well.

• Paper packaging does not provide full weatherproofing, though paper mailers and corrugated shipping boxes offer high-weather protection. Brands often cite concerns around a paper mailer's lack of water resistance; however, we have found our customers have collectively transitioned millions of mailers from plastic to paper without any significant water damage rates.

• Paper packaging, specifically packaging with adhesive strips like mailers and bags, can have a shorter shelf-life than plastic packaging. 

Understand operational implications:

• Paper packaging has more volume and takes up more space than plastic alternatives, requiring more storage space.

• Fulfillment teams and finished goods factories/production partners must be trained to fulfill and ship with paper packaging successfully. Expect this to take time, practice, and potentially a higher labor cost.

• Consider your standard ordering cadence and lead times and compare them to paper. Depending on the required storage space, you may need to order more frequently at lower volumes.

Given these considerations, ask yourself if eliminating plastic and adopting completely plastic-free packaging solutions is the right step for your business. Will this strategy meet your sustainability vision and goals? Is it set up to be successful within various departments and with multiple stakeholders?

Goal

Clarify how you will decide on your plastic-free options, who will be involved, and what success looks like.

EcoEnclose Insights

As you search for plastic-free packaging solutions, materials, and ideologies, you will be met with many options. To keep yourself from getting hung up or confused in a paradox of choice, determine what a successful transition means for your brand.
 
We’ve found that when brands embark on this process without clear requirements for sustainability, costing, internal operations, and customer feedback, they are paralyzed or impulsive when making decisions.

Relevance & Why It Matters

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

Before starting the brunt of the work of your plastic-to-paper initiative, work with your internal team and external supply chain stakeholders to understand what gates will need to be met, which requirements are deal-breakers, and who needs to sign off on a solution before it’s adopted and implemented company-wide. This way, you might learn about barriers, challenges, or opportunities ahead of time instead of facing them during the process.

Critical Questions & Action Items

Determine, then rank, your success criteria and the specific requirements that will need to be met.

Survey your internal and external teams to understand which departments and individual stakeholders will be involved in this transition in small or large ways.

Understand who must sign off on final product solutions and decisions to adopt and implement them.

Tools for Step 2

1. Prioritize Your Decision-Making Criteria
2. EXAMPLE: Brand X's Prioritized Decision-Making Criteria
3. Determine Stakeholder Engagement

Establishing Decision-Making Criteria

Do you have a target price in mind? How will the switch to paper impact your storage and warehousing situation? 

Are your finished goods factory partners open to using these materials, and if so, what are the labor cost implications? 

What is the transition plan? What are acceptable damage rates? How will your branding and custom-printed packaging be adjusted to work with paper? 

These are just some of the questions that, ideally, your packaging provider will ask you when quoting and exploring a move to paper packaging with you. If these questions give you pause, that is okay! 

Use our tool - Prioritize Your Decision-Making Criteria - to consider the most common implications of how paper packaging affects a business, then rank them based on your operation. Also complete a Stakeholder Engagement Matrix to better understand who will be critical to this transition, who requires sign-off, and who may just need a heads-up. 

Specific questions may include:

• What environmental impact do you seek to achieve, and how will you measure it?

• What is your desired impact on customer experience and brand loyalty, and how will you measure it?

• What impact might plastic-free packaging solutions have on your damage rates, and what level do you need to stay underneath? 

This question of damage rates is fundamental. We recommend examining your current (pre-plastic-free packaging) damage rates. Keep your Customer Service team listening for damage issues during this transition. Measure damage-issue feedback against previous damage rates and ensure no significant increase. 

Once complete, these tools guide you around where to begin and how to know if a solution will work for your entire team.

Our Sustainable Packaging Framework

At EcoEnclose, we use our Sustainable Packaging Framework to make product innovation and development decisions. Our framework is a hierarchy of our sustainability criteria, showing which factors are most important to us and our mission and which ones are less important or irrelevant. Having an existing framework helps us answer difficult sustainability questions when they arise.

Read it—steal it.

Goal

Audit your packaging and determine where you use plastic. Then, use your decision-making framework to choose the optimal paper alternatives for each category you’ll pilot and test.

EcoEnclose Insights

After you’ve created a picture of success that you and your team can work towards, it’s time to sample and test.

Auditing the plastic footprint of your current packaging gives you a clear baseline and highlights the most practical components to tackle first—rather than simply addressing what you or your customers feel should be prioritized.

We’ve worked with many brands who are not fully aware of the environmental impacts inherent to paper, namely, carbon footprint, risk of deforestation, water footprint, and habitat/biodiversity risks. Utilize the most circular materials possible, such as recycled content and PCW, in your packaging. This will prevent you from unintentionally pulling from threatened forest fiber in an attempt to reduce plastic pollution.

Relevance & Why It Matters

What isn’t measured isn’t managed.

Auditing your supply chain for plastic packaging sounds arduous but is often relatively straightforward. Most D2C brands find their plastic footprint mostly in their product (primary) packaging and shipping (secondary) packaging. Conducting a basic estimation of your plastic footprint will give you insight into where the most plastic is and which applications of paper alternatives will have the most significant impact.

Critical Questions & Action Items

Audit your packaging - where does plastic show up? Where is the majority of the plastic footprint in your supply chain?

For each plastic application, explore what options best meet your decision criteria. There are a handful of common specs that accompany paper packaging, especially when it comes to paper mailers. These include paperboard thickness, construction, recycled content, responsible paper sourcing, sizing, and side or bottom gussets. Other specs matter for different packaging formats, such as pallet wrap and inner poly bags—for example, transparency and stretchability.

Sample a variety of zero-waste packaging options or packaging made from recycled materials that align with your success criteria. Then conduct appropriate ship tests to learn how they perform in transit and with customers.

Tools for Step 3

1. Audit Your Plastic Supply Chain Footprint
2. EXAMPLE: Brand X's Plastic Audit
3. Choose Polybag Solutions by Logistics Model and Sustainability Goals
4. Choose Plastic-Free Packaging Options

Dive Deeper

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Audit Your Plastic Footprint

To transition plastic packaging out of your supply chain, you must first understand where it is. Use our plastic audit tool to estimate the current volume of plastic in your supply chain, and use the results to inform which plastic components may be the best to tackle first.

Some brands choose easier, low-hanging fruit to switch first, and others start with components that take up most of the plastic footprint.

All Paper Isn’t Equal

Removing and reducing plastic from your supply chain helps brands reduce their reliance on fossil fuels, maximize the curbside recyclability of their packaging, and minimize their negative impact on litter and plastic pollution.

Choosing paper over plastic also has implications for other areas of sustainability: carbon footprint, forest and critical habitat protection, and biodiversity.

These resources cover the sustainability implications to prepare and plan for during your material switch and how to make this important transition consciously.

What is the most important choice you can make when using paper packaging? The answer is utilizing high levels of recycled content, specifically post-consumer waste (PCW) content. If recycled content is infeasible, choose FSC® or PEFC-certified solutions (and avoid fraudulent certification claims).

Learn more about the hierarchy of sustainable paper inputs with Canopy’s Paper Steps.

Use Caution with Biodegradable & Dissolvable Plastics

After extensive research into materials, infrastructure, and pending/future legislation, EcoEnclose has determined which bio-based inputs align with our standard for regenerative materials. Learn which materials have passed our rigorous analysis and why we’ve been deliberately cautious of bioplastics. 

We instead encourage our brands to design their product and shipping packaging for circularity instead of biodegradability. 

We recommend using paper instead of bio-based or biodegradable plastics. See below for the top reasons, and view our resources to dive deeper.

• Recycling is more circular than composting and is the preferred end-of-life for most packaging.

• Composting exists to be an ecological net-positive waste stream for organic waste.

• Certified compostable packaging often doesn’t compost in real-life settings.

• Compostability is not a cure for marine plastic pollution.

• Compostability and recyclability are solely about end-of-life, not lifecycle.

Choose the Right Paperboard Thickness

Most paper mailers are made with paperboard, a thicker material falling between standard copy paper and cardboard. Paperboard varies in thickness and measures in points (pt). You should choose your mailers based on the paperboard thickness needed to protect your products. EcoEnclose offers a wide variety of paper mailers.

Most soft-goods shipments perform remarkably well in a standard 10 - 12pt paperboard mailer, but others (bulkier apparel) require a thicker paperboard to get the job done. Remember that the thicker the paperboard, the more paper used, and the higher the environmental impact. Balance this consideration against the mailers that work most successfully with your products.

Size Your Paper Alternatives Correctly

Train your team to select the right sizes for the right shipments.

• Work with your packaging provider to source samples of mailers in various sizes to see what works best for your products.

• Paper mailers can hold around 75% of the volume of the same poly mailer due to a difference in flexibility. We recommend trying two sizes of paper mailer: the same size as your current poly mailer and one size larger.

• When replacing large poly mailers, you may need to switch to a box or corrugated mailer to maintain structure, while thinner paperboard mailers are better suited to smaller shipments.

When Gussets Are Needed

Gussets give a few inches of depth to a standard mailer by adding a folded strip of paper on the sides or bottom, thus increasing the capacity inside a standard mailer.

We offer gussets on several of our paper mailers and find them most effective for inherently bulkier shipments—like a sweatshirt or an order with multiple pieces of apparel or other soft goods—rather than standard, mostly flat shipments.

• Every shipment may not require gussets. Use flat mailers whenever possible and gusseted mailers for shipments with multiple products or bulky apparel.

• Gussets do not mean the shipment will be inherently safer in transit. When gusseted mailers are underpacked, their corners and creases can absorb excess stress and compromise the mailer’s structure.

• Gussets typically increase the cost of a mailer.

Goal

Pilot, test, troubleshoot, and iterate for this transition in steps. Set your fulfillment and operation teams up for success in the long term.

EcoEnclose Insights

Sometimes, even the best initiatives can be stalled by poor preparation and change management.

Test, test, test. Testing is the best way to understand what packaging works best with your products, protects them, and performs well throughout the fulfillment process. Testing is arguably the most critical aspect of changing any major component of your packaging. It is also the best way to understand how the plastic-free packaging solutions you’ve chosen will perform at scale once you begin phasing out your current plastic-based packaging.

Make sure you run ship tests that give you critical feedback on damage rates, customer feedback, and any changes to shipping costs or carrier rates that could affect fulfillment at a larger level.

We’ve seen brands choose paper solutions based solely on price and aesthetics, without testing them in their factories or fulfillment centers. They purchase large volumes of new packaging to start their transition to paper and often run into issues when switching their systems simultaneously. This can lead to operational issues and damaged packaging or products—and, in the worst case, excess packaging inventory that may not be usable. Upfront sampling and testing prevent this.

Moving slowly and steadily through this transition helps your team build confidence in the initiative and sets them up for long-term success.

Relevance & Why It Matters

Conducting tests with packaging solutions you’ve chosen (or are betting on) will help you understand where friction may occur at scale.

Critical Questions & Action Items

We recommend approaching Step 4 in phases. Ideally:

1. Piloting and testing paper packaging for performance and damage concerns

2. Onboarding sizes in phases, prioritizing smaller packaging sizes first

3. Training your DC/fulfillment centers/factories to work with new materials successfully

4. Troubleshooting issues and concerns

Our tools and checklists outline common concerns, FAQs, and troubleshooting issues to prepare your team, along with target damage rates you can use to measure success.

Tools for Step 4

1. Decide How Many Test Shipments You Need
2. Calculate Your Product and Packaging Damage Rate
3. Prepare Your Warehouse and Inventory: Checklist
4. Train your Fulfillment Team To Work With Paper: Checklist

A Successful Transition

Successfully switching to paper packaging in your eCommerce and shipping typically entails the following major steps:

• Piloting and testing paper packaging for performance and damage concerns

• Onboarding sizes in phases

• Training your DC/fulfillment centers/factories to work with new materials successfully

• Troubleshooting issues and concerns

Conducting Ship Testing

Ship testing is the best way to assure performance once a new packaging product is introduced (or considered) for your products. Ship tests are small batches of sample shipments packed in the new packaging and shipped to people who can give you detailed feedback once their packages arrive. Many ship tests are sent to other company offices across the country, family, friends, and anyone who can provide critical input or pictures of the packaging once they are delivered. Ship tests ensure new packaging fits your products well, protects them in shipment, and arrives in good condition. 

We always recommend shipping tests before you transition fully to a new packaging solution. This can save you the headache of purchasing large volumes of packaging that will not work for you. Have a period of overlap during your transition and place survey prompts to draw customer feedback. We recommend pursuing feedback using printed QR codes on mailers or after-shipment check-in emails. 

For enterprise accounts or those who ship 2,500+ orders per week, we recommend trying a staggered ship test, starting at 1,000 units, then moving up in volume over a few increments instead of starting with moving over your entire volume. If you choose to work with EcoEnclose on your enterprise-level plastic-free packaging strategy, we will help you execute these ship tests. 

Use our Interactive Toolkit to determine how many ship tests are needed? Guide your assessment with our Damage Rate Calculator.

What Is Damage?

Most brands are comfortable with packaging damage rates around 2% but expect product damage rates to stay below 0.5%. It is normal for packaging to get a bit roughed up in transit, but product damage and loss rates should stay very low. If they don’t, it’s a sign that the packaging needs to be improved or redesigned, or that the troubleshooting on the packaging application should be completed.  

• Damaged packaging: Holes, rips and tears, small punctures, bursting at the seams, opening completely during transit. The industry standard for eCommerce is a 2% or less rate of damaged packaging.

• Damaged product: The product itself is rendered unusable by the consumer, necessitating a return or replacement. Aim for a 0.5% or less product damage rate.

Transitioning Plastic Components Over Time

Do not try to replace all plastic packaging in your business in one month. Start by auditing where you use single-use plastic, and phase those items out one at a time. Even within a single category (like mailers), transition specific SKUs gradually rather than all at once. 

For example, focus on your smaller mailers first, since smaller paper mailers tend to perform more comparably to poly mailers. Then work your way up to larger sizes over time.

Building Supply Chain Redundancy

Paper demand is at an all-time high as many companies transition from plastic to paper. We anticipate that supply chains will remain volatile as shocks ripple through the commodity markets and economy. 

When you work with EcoEnclose for your paper packaging strategy, we will work with you to understand your requirements and build redundancy and slack into your paper packaging manufacturing. If you are not working with us, find other ways to build redundancy and excess capacity.

Training Fulfillment to Work With Paper

Build a training program for your fulfillment team, as adjusting to new material will require a learning curve for them. Some key differences between paper and plastic include the following: 

• Handle paper packaging carefully, as the material is more rigid and delicate. Paper packaging can tear and puncture more easily than plastic counterparts. As such, your team members need to handle them more carefully.

• Fill paper mailers to less capacity than poly mailers. If you typically stock several sizes of poly mailers and have your team choose based on each shipment’s dimensions, you’ll want to train them to pick a slightly larger paper mailer than they would have chosen in poly.

• Seal paper mailers with more pressure and time to ensure a strong adhesive bond. This will keep the package from opening during transit.

• Paper requires more pressure applied to the sealing adhesive strip than plastic-based materials. Apply pressure for a few seconds longer to ensure the mailer’s adhesive has cured (this is especially true for recycled paper surfaces, which have shorter and fuzzier fibers than virgin paper). Missing this step can cause paper mailers to open during transit, leading to returns, damages, and missing shipments.

• In addition to the added time and pressure needed to seal the mailer, expect to give equal attention to the adherence of the shipping label. Recycled paper fibers are shorter and more textured than virgin paper or plastic. They may require a stronger adhesive or more pressure to get a firm stick on the shipping label. We offer high tack direct thermal shipping labels, with hot melt, industrial-strength adhesives. These are ideal for paper mailers, which have adherence issues with standard shipping labels. 

Paper void fill and hangtags typically require more time than automated plastic alternatives. For example, many brands swap plastic void fill pillows with paper-based GreenWrap. While we love this switch, fulfilling with GreenWrap is more time-intensive than pillow machines. We can help you transition from an automated air pillow void fill to an automated paper pillow option when working at high volumes.

Shorter Inventory Turns for Packaging

Some brands will buy more than one year of their plastic packaging needs at a time to manage supply chain risks, reduce unit costs, or both. We recommend ordering paper packaging so you’re holding no more than six months of supply at a time. Paper has a shorter shelf life than plastic—especially in extreme temperatures or high humidity—so smaller, more frequent buys are safer.

Goal

Promote your plastic-to-paper transition. Quantify the impact and ROI; determine what components work well, need improvement, or don’t work for you.

EcoEnclose Insights

This transition can have major operational implications and added costs, so plan to maximize this transition's ROI. Promote your paper packaging transition to communicate your sustainability commitments, follow through with customers, and garner more engagement and brand loyalty. Measure any potential downsides to ensure your paper transition isn’t detracting from the customer experience.

Relevance & Why It Matters

Marketing and measuring the holistic impact of this transition will give you clear insight into the total ROI of this business choice.

Critical Questions & Action Items

Market and promote your use of plastic-free packaging solutions or work to reduce your plastic footprint.

• On your packaging itself through creative designs and copy

• Throughout your website checkout and order confirmation experience

• Throughout your social media channels and digital marketing efforts

Measure and assess:

• Were your baseline decision-making criteria, budget, and goals met?

• Damage rates and performance of new packaging

• Sustainability implications and positive impact

• Customer feedback, engagement, and approval

Tools for Step 5

1. Assess: Was Your Transition Successful?
2. Calculate Long-Term Damage Rates
3. Calculate Your Packaging's Sustainability Impact

Promote Your New Packaging

If possible, invest in custom branding that engages your customer more deeply in your plastic-to-paper journey and the ethos of your company. Showcase your brand identity and build customer loyalty with bold on-package messaging that conveys: 

• The sustainability attributes of your packaging and any sustainable add-ons

• The proper disposal instructions for the end-receiver

• Your broader sustainability goals and transition to paper process 

One of our favorite examples comes from Burton Snowboards [left], whose website showcases more information about their specific packaging goals. 

If custom-branding is not an option for you, communicate through

• Custom-printed recycled cards for each shipment

• Messages printed on your packing slips

• Digital marketing channels, such as social media, our site, confirmation/shipping emails, etc. 

Be sure to avoid greenwashing.

• Provide as much detail about the product and its production as possible.

• Communicate attributes and disposal directions clearly and directly, highlighting features such as:

• Product inputs (recycled and post-consumer waste %)

• Specific end-of-life and disposal instructions

• Accurate sustainability certifications where relevant

• Avoid misleading, vague, and unclear messaging, such as: “Eco-friendly Packaging,” “Sustainable Packaging,” “Recyclable” (versus curbside recyclable), “Responsible” or “Responsibly-sourced,” and “Recycled” (versus 100% recycled) 

Our guide to Marketing Your Sustainable Packaging includes language to use and avoid, EcoEnclose Sustainability icons that can be used in any branded packaging design, and tips on how to communicate sustainability efforts best. 

Work with EcoEnclose on your sustainable packaging. You can be confident that our Creative and Sustainability teams will ensure your artwork is clear, free of vague language, and aligned with the most up-to-date labeling regulations and requirements.

Measuring Your Progress and Success

You defined success in steps 1 and 2. Now, it’s time to assess your current state against those initial success criteria and requirements. 

Strategic questions to use for evaluation:

1. Did you meet your baseline decision-making criteria and requirements? If yes, consider this process a success.

2. What kind of sustainability impact and benefit came from this transition?

• What is the carbon impact of your packaging?

• What is the total environmental impact of your packaging? How does it compare to your previous packaging? (Measure this with our Packaging Sustainability Calculators)

• How many pounds of single-use plastic did you remove and prevent?

• What percentage of your packaging is now plastic-free?

• How many pounds of recycled materials did you use in new packaging and thus create demand for?

3. What impact did the transition have on your customer experience?

• What damage rates did you see? Was there a noticeable increase or change? Did you see an increase (or decrease) in returns?

• What feedback did customers share? Consider proactively seeking feedback by reaching out to customers or adding a link or QR code to shipments so they can easily share their input.

• Was there a bump in social media shares or repeat purchases?

You will undoubtedly learn a lot during this process. Use this step to document your best practices, learnings, and ideas for future iterations and improvements.

Goal

Identify areas for improvement in sustainability and circularity and which plastic packaging components you’ll tackle next.

EcoEnclose Insights

Removing plastic packaging from your supply chain is a marathon, not a sprint. Recognize that this is a long game and that the best solutions may change, evolve, and be invented in the years to come.

Aim to increase circularity and recycled content—whether paper or plastic—wherever possible, so your packaging footprint stays as low as it can be.

Relevance & Why It Matters

In terms of reducing environmental impact and increasing sustainability criteria, there will likely always be areas for improvement. Identifying opportunities is easiest from a place of curiosity and confidence, especially after a successful transition.

Critical Questions & Action Items

Strategy:

• According to US Plastics Pact’s definition, what remaining plastic components are considered problematic or unnecessary? How might you approach them next?

• Besides removing plastic altogether, which plastic components are truly necessary and should be improved now or left on the back burner until better alternatives arrive?

Sustainability and Circularity:

• What sustainability goals already exist for your packaging, and where are the gaps between the current state and those goals?

• What is the current overall recycled content percentage of your packaging?

• Which packaging components can be made with recycled content and, eventually, with high post-consumer waste levels?

• Is there potential for your packaging to utilize novel and regenerative materials to catalyze the adoption of the newest sustainability innovations? Specific examples include carbon-negative black Algae Ink™ and seaweed packaging.

Tools for Step 6

1. Reduce Your Plastic Footprint When it Can't Be Eliminated
2. Maximize Circularity and Continuous Improvement

Improving Materials Circularity

Circular packaging is made from packaging and becomes packaging again: how close to this vision is your current packaging suite?

First, use as much recycled content as possible in your packaging, especially post-consumer waste. This supports and financially bolsters the recycling industry so materials can be recovered on an ongoing basis.

Second, design your packaging for recyclability in municipal recycling streams whenever possible. Recycling has come under a lot of fire recently, with myths like “everything you recycle gets landfilled anyway.” In reality, a well-run recycler that has invested in educating its community on what can and can’t be recycled can often sort and sell 90% or more of what it receives to be remanufactured.

Recycling the material means it can be quickly turned into something useful in its next life, a strategy that offsets the need for more virgin input to enter the market. See our packaging design tips and tricks, verified and created in collaboration with our recycling partner and national zero-waste leader Eco-Cycle.