Six Ways to Reduce Plastic Waste from Shipping and Online Shopping

If you’re like me, you love to shop online. It’s fast, easy and you can get literally anything from anywhere.

Unfortunately, buying online often means products come in plastic packaging like styrofoam peanuts, plastic air bubbles, or hard plastic shells. All this doesn’t even count the carbon footprint from shipping things from far flung regions.

That’s why we need ways to reduce plastic waste from shipping and online shopping. Here are my top six ways to avoid plastic:

• Request eco-friendly alternatives to ship your goods. Etsy is great for this. You can reach out to the seller and in most cases they are more than happy to ship your products without plastic.

• Ask to ship all items together. This will cut your carbon footprint and get the maximum use out of the shipping products you use.

• Shop at stores like Package-Free Shop or Wild Minimalist. The picture here is of a Package-Free Shop box. They use paper tape and all products were wrapped in a sturdy paper instead of plastic.

• Buy used. There are all kinds of places where you can gently-used items - whether it's Poshmark, ThreadUp, Facebook groups/market, Craigslist or even going to your local Goodwill - by reusing items, you extend its life and avoid unnecessary waste. Vintage is cool!

• Buy in person! Sometimes it's just easier. Cut the carbon footprint and avoid unnecessary plastic shipping additions.

• Reduce what you buy. This is antithetical to buying in general, but the best way to avoid plastic, is to just not buy it. Be like Marie Kondo and live a more simple life.

If you do end up getting plastic packaging products, reuse them! I just did a big move and since we saved so much of our packaging materials, we didn’t need to buy any and we kept all our fragile things secure.

Request that items get shipped in an eco-friendly way to reduce waste.