A recent story from Racked highlights the outsized impact that quaint, Instagram-worthy packaging is having on the environment.
As many of you may already know, the fashion industry has been given the inauspicious distinction of Second Worst Polluter in the World — shoutout to Big Oil for forever holding down that top spot and always being terrible — and the twee packaging encasing most products sold online isn’t helping things.
“Roughly one-third of trash in the US today is made up of packaging waste,” the article notes, “and even with ongoing recycling efforts, 36 million tons of packaging waste ends up in landfills, according to The Guardian.”
It’s an insane problem. Packaging is literally designed to be disposable, and that’s why Brandan Babenzien, founder of Noah, and a source for the article, decided to go the eco-friendly route. In a blog post on Noah’s website earlier this week, titled “Our Packaging Sucks,” Babenzien writes, “…we’ve opted to keep [our packaging] as minimal as possible, and that sucks, according to many of our customers.”
Noah ships its goods in sustainably-produced paper mailers, which often get damaged in transit and leave plenty to be desired in the “unboxing” process. But the damage to the envelopes doesn’t impact the clothes, Babenzien notes, and he’s comfortable keeping the environmental costs down regardless of feedback, telling Racked that, “the current rate at which brands operate with packaging waste is “completely irresponsible.”
Amen.
You can read more about it at Racked.
