I’ve been on Etsy for over two years and I’ve done business online in one form or another for almost ten years. It took me awhile to negotiate between my green values and my desire to give good customer service, and in the long run, I realized trusting my customers to recycle and upcycle is good customer service. Thus, I err on the side of packing pretty – and well.

So here’s what I’ve determined:

1. It’s well worth spending money on decent packing material. I like to get a giant roll of bubble wrap from Sam’s Club and I use that as the core of the package.

2. The second layer of packing can be more flexible – old newspapers, magazine pages, tissue paper – it’s important to make it somehow consistent with your shop branding. Customers are more likely to reuse/upcycle tissue paper and more likely to throw away or NOT recycle newsprint, etc. I would encourage you NOT to use styrafom peanuts – not only is it really annoying and messy to receive, while it does compress in a landfill it adds to the toxic sludge that forms at the lowest layers of the landfills. Green is as green does, and reuse tends to be more universal and consistent than recycling programs.

3. A postal worker shouldn’t be able to see it, hear it, or smell it. Wrap and seal those puppies up – use tape, reusable bags, whatever it takes.

4. The more delicate the item, the firmer packing needs to be – you should pack your item so it doesn’t move.

I understand the desire to decorate envelopes, etc. but this also gives clues to what might be inside – and might get your package stolen or deferred. The US postal service has mostly good people working for it, but sometimes stuff happens, or that 1% bad apple picks up the mail on a postal route.

I have had some awful stuff happen from bad packing choices in the past. Fortunately, some very patient customers have been willing to give me feedback and tell me what I did wrong with my packing choices. While I don’t have a perfect system yet – it’s hard to say what will happen between my post office and the destination – I know I’ve done all I can to get my goodies to my customers in one piece!

Related articles by Zemanta

• Tips for Cutting Postage Costs
• Consumer Trend: eBay Is Greener Than You Think
• All about Industrial Tissue, Recycled Kraft, Bogus, and Indented Bogus Papers

Share on Facebook