(It is estimated that 29% of US consumers spend up to $100 per month on online shopping for clothing, shoes and accessories — that’s a lot of orders wrapped in plastic packaging. Especially when you consider that the amount of plastic (mostly packaging) entering our oceans every year is set to triple to 29 million tonnes over the next 20 years. Ahead, discover just how severe the plastic problem is and what we’re doing about it.
Key Takeaways:- Understand the impact of plastic packaging and why ditching it entirely is not the answer
- Find out what the sustainable alternative to fashion’s plastic packaging is
While a vast majority of the plastic packaging that our online orders arrive in are technically recyclable, most of it is tossed in the trash.
Despite having plastic bag collection sites at major retailers like Walmart and Target, the recycling rate in the United States is only 12.5%.
The remaining 87.5% of plastic packaging either ends up in landfills, gets incinerated or is left to pollute waterways and poison marine life.
The ocean plastic problem is so pervasive that garbage patches have now been found in the South Pacific and North Atlantic oceans. And sure enough, more than 700 marine species have been found to ingest plastic, including over 200 types of fish that humans consume.
In reality, there’s no escaping plastic. Fashion brands have been known to package their shipments in plastic bags made from polyethylene (a polymer derived from non-renewable fossil fuels) to provide protection from water, handling and any transportation snags.
At the end of the day, our garments need to be packaged in something that is durable, waterproof, lightweight and cheap. Without plastic wrapping, the products we desire are incapable of reaching us in a presentable condition. So, what is the practical yet sustainable solution?
Biodegradable plastic: the better alternativeRecent research on recycled plastics has shown that their entire life cycle footprint has the lowest possible global warming impact. A fact that reinforces the idea that plastic packaging must become completely circular in order to prevent waste and its unsustainable impact on the environment.
As a conscious fashion label, we are well aware of our unavoidable dependence on plastic packaging for order shipments. This is why we’ve carefully chosen P-Life® bags to pack and deliver our clothes in. P-Life® bags are made from a unique oxo-biodegradable additive technology that converts non-biodegradable plastics into naturally occurring compounds like H2O and biomass that aid plant growth.
So, when you receive a package from ZAVI and decide to add it in the compost, you can be assured that our oxo-biodegradable bags will immediately begin to degrade once they are disposed of in the natural environment.
The decomposition process continues until the bag has degraded to nothing more than water and humus, which is completely absorbed back into the environment.
Additionally, these oxo-biodegradable bags can be recycled along with other plastics through traditional recycling channels, making them completely recyclable as well as biodegradable.
Curious to learn more about plastic and its impact? Read more about it here:
- Recycled Plastic v/s Virgin Plastic: What’s Better for the Planet?
- Are Your Online Orders Packed Sustainably?
Published by: Vibhuti Vazirani/ 2022-01-06