Considering the current trends, although the e-commerce model brings great convenience to the public, the process of delivering products from sellers to consumers through logistics has led to problems such as excessive packaging and inefficient recycling channels.
Excessive packaging of e-commerce products is a prominent issue. There are two forms of excessive packaging. Firstly, structural excess: a significant portion of e-commerce goods have triple packaging, including transportation packaging, manufacturer packaging, and the product’s own external packaging, along with some unnecessary cushioning materials, resulting in massive packaging waste. Secondly, decorative excess: manufacturers add too many patterns and texts to the packaging, use overly expensive materials, and the quantity far exceeds the required range. The main reason for this decorative excess is that consumers find the required products through search on online platforms.
Currently, despite the existence of reusable delivery boxes, most e-commerce packaging waste is directly sent to landfills due to inefficient recycling channels. The main reasons for this inefficiency are threefold: Firstly, difficulty in recycling: return boxes are only set up at delivery points, causing consumers to often discard the packaging they bring home as regular trash. Additionally, there is no systematic recycling mechanism or management method, leading to massive packaging waste. Secondly, high recycling costs: the process of recycling e-commerce packaging requires a lot of manpower and material resources, as well as high transportation and storage costs, making it difficult to recycle e-commerce packaging waste.
