Many brands have gotten quite creative with their packaging, offering innovative eco-friendly packaging instead of the classic cardboard box. A few of our favorites are from Timbuk2 and PACT. Timbuk2 has taken it to a whole new level by printing a map of the city of San Francisco on the outside of the plastic bag they ship their bags in. The map is dubbed “a waterproof San Francisco bike map”. Sweet! It’s amazingly detailed, and even has some of the companies favorite points of interest marked off on the map. We applaud this move as it gives a simple shipping bag a useful afterlife.

PACT has gone the full eco-route with their packaging. Claiming that you can toss the packaging in the dirt and it will completely decompose, label and all in less than 45 days. Cool!

We are a bit more basic here at Common Soles. Typically using the Priority Mail boxes provided to us by the US Postal Service. The boxes are made from post-consumer paperboard so they aren’t all bad! We also use the Tyvek envelopes from the USPS. Tyvek is a product of the DuPont Company, and is a brand of spun high-density polyethylene fibers, a synthetic material. So boo on us… DuPont does offer a recycling program for those of you interested in a proper afterlife of your used Tyvek envelope. More info on that here.  

We are researching some more innovative packaging materials to integrate into our operations! Anytime we do need to add padding to an order we do use a recycled item. Typically from previous shipments. Keeping the Reduce and Reuse activities in mind and practice before we have to hit Recycle. For items shipped from our factory to us in the US they typically arrive in cardboard boxes constructed from post-consumer paper pulp. Again – that’s good. But not perfect. 

We use large plastic tubs in our warehouse to sort and manage all inventory once it arrives here. Yes, plastic is bad – but these things are incredibly durable and last a heck of a lot longer than paper ones would. So based on pure assumption, I would say they are a net gain eco-wise.

Working on keeping it green,
Dave