Unwrap The E-commerce Waste

As India catches up on online shopping, we need regulations to minimise the waste that is generated from packaging the products

- Akhileshwari Reddy

ONE OF the least studied and underreported generators of plastic and non-plastic waste are e-commerce companies. In 2017, e-commerce accounted for US $2.3 trillion of the US $23.24 trillion global retail market. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, e-commerce packaging accounts for 30 per cent of solid waste generated in the US. India’s e-commerce packaging industry was worth US $32 billion in 2015 and is expected to grow rapidly to about US $73 billion by 2020. Flipkart, for instance, does around 8 million shipments every month.

But there are no estimates about the amount of e-commerce packaging or the disposal of waste, as no organisation has bothered to investigate the same. E-commerce packaging and the disposal of waste have huge environmental costs. At present, e-commerce packaging comes in multiple layers, which is made of plastic, paper, bubble wrap, air packets, tape and cardboard cartons.

While most of these packaging materials are recyclable, India’s abysmal record indicates that a large portion of these materials will end up clogging our drains and landfills. The problem of excessive packaging has been exacerbated due to the growth of priority customer services that place a premium on ultra-fast delivery which do not allow for consolidated delivery of packages. This is leading to multiple individually packed deliveries thus increasing the generation of waste.