Eco-Friendly Packaging: Sustainable Packaging Ideas for 2025

If you bring reusable bags to the store or recycle packing material when shipping a gift, you’re not alone. As consumers become more conscious of their shopping habits, they’re looking for more than sustainable products. Customers care about sustainable business practices across the board, including eco-friendly packaging.

Case in point: The sustainable packaging market was worth $270 billion in 2024 and experts expect it to reach $490 billion by 2034. Investors have also begun to assess a company’s performance using a framework called ESG. This stands for environmental, social, and governance, and reviews the company’s impact on the environment, its relationship with people and society, and how the company operates.

How businesses package and ship items has a major impact on the planet. In this article, business founders share their sustainability practices, including eco-friendly packaging options and how they ship and fulfill orders with the environment in mind.

Get their best eco-friendly packaging tips and ideas to bring more sustainability to your product packaging and shipping. You’ll also find factors to consider when selecting the right eco-friendly packing options for your business.

What is eco-friendly packaging?

Eco-friendly packaging uses sustainable materials and practices to reduce environmental impact. This includes recyclable, biodegradable, or compostable materials that lessen waste. Brands using eco-friendly packaging show social responsibility and a regard for the future. This appeals to environmentally conscious consumers and enhances brand loyalty in a competitive marketplace.

Types of eco-friendly packaging

• Recyclable packaging
• Recycled packaging
• Compostable packaging
• Reusable packaging
• Minimal packaging

Eco-friendly packaging, both for your products and shipping, helps your business be greener. Here are a few sustainable packaging options:

Recyclable packaging

Customers can recycle this type of packaging to help keep more items out of landfills. Recyclable packaging materials include cardboard, paper, and aluminum cans. Olive oil brand Graza packages its refills in aluminum cans, which are endlessly recyclable.

Recycled packaging

Packaging made from recycled material, like post-consumer (used) paper, means there’s less need to create new materials. Hero Packaging makes its paper mailers from 100% post-consumer recycled paper.

Compostable packaging

Compost is a natural fertilizer made from decomposed organic material. Composting keeps organic waste out of landfills by transforming it into a valuable agricultural product.

The issue with compostable or biodegradable packaging is not everyone agrees on what these terms mean. Some items are clearly compostable, like yard trimmings and fruit and vegetable scraps.

Some are debatable. For example, many home composters don’t add meat and dairy products to compost bins or piles because they attract animals. Meanwhile, large-scale compost facilities welcome any type of food.

And what about bioplastics? Made from a plant material (like corn) and plastic, bioplastics break down faster than regular plastics. Again, organizations differ whether bioplastics are compostable.

“You have to test everything on your own. You cannot rely on third-party certifications,” Anaita Sarkar, cofounder of Hero Packaging, says on an episode of Shopify Masters. While partnering with the Australasian Bioplastics Association to secure a “home compostable” certification, Anaita cut up Heropacks and added them to a DIY compost pile to gather her own data.

“That’s fantastic to get certified by someone like that. But unless you are doing your own testing in your own backyard … how do you know whether they’re good or not? You don’t know the conditions they’re being used in. And you know your product, you know how it’s supposed to be used,” Anaita says.

Even with a certification, some facilities won’t accept compostable packaging. For example, the City of Los Angeles bans products labeled “compostable” or “biodegradable” from its curbside organics recycling program.

Reusable packaging

Reusable packaging can be used again and again. If you have a retail location or pop-up shop, send customers home with a branded tote bag instead of a single-use paper or plastic bag. As a bonus, when they reuse it, they’re publicizing your business.

Or, take reuse a step further by creating a refillable product like Fluff’s Cloud Compact. “Our compacts are designed, hopefully, to last a lifetime—or for a long time, at the very least,” founder Erika Geraerts says on an episode of Shopify Masters. “You buy that once and that’s your entry into the brand. And then it’s about refilling and trying different colors and shades.”

Minimal packaging

One way to be more eco-friendly is to reduce the amount of material you use in your product packaging design. This way, there’s less for customers to have to recycle or throw away.

It was the natural choice for sustainable footwear company Rothy’s: “Rather than shipping a box within a box, our shoeboxes are the vehicle for both shipping and returns,” says Lauren Taflinger, former director of production at Rothy’s.

Considerations for choosing eco-friendly packaging

• Needs
• Instructions
• Costs
• Audience expectations
• Distance
• Shelf life

To choose eco-friendly packaging, here are a few considerations:

Needs

To help you determine what kind of eco-friendly packaging makes sense for you, take stock of your packaging needs. Answer these questions:

• Do you need primary packaging (like a tube for lipstick) or secondary packaging (like a box or mailer) only?
• If your item is fragile, what kind of protection does it need?
• Does your item contain liquids?
• Is your product sensitive to extreme temperatures? Are there other weather considerations?

Wildgrain ships frozen sourdough breads, pastas, and artisan pastries across the country. To protect the products in transit, it uses dry ice and Nutri Ice gel packs. The recycled plastic bag suggests four options to customers: freeze and reuse the gel pack, flush the non-toxic contents in a sink or toilet, dispose of it in a waste bin, or pour the contents into soil around plants.

Say your products are popular in a part of the country that gets a lot of rain. Your items may need more protection.

For Anaita, a water-resistant material was a must for her clothing business. “I looked into paper and it was great, and it was recyclable and compostable, but they were not waterproof. And so … they wouldn’t work for the products that I was sending,” Anaita says. That’s what inspired her to create a compostable mailer.

Instructions

Giving your customers clear instructions on how to dispose of items is important. For example, someone might throw away a compostable product, which will end up in a landfill. Compostable products only degrade under certain conditions, so adding instructions or a list of composting facilities helps keep more products out of the trash.

Dieux, a skin care brand, shares videos on social media to educate its audience on how to store and properly dispose of its aluminum samples. Because recycling facilities won’t take small items, customers can wrap the product with leftover aluminum or place it inside a can to make it more than three inches tall.

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Cost

Some types of eco-friendly packaging may be more expensive than non-sustainable options. However, choosing sustainable options can have a positive impact on your brand equity.

“It’s really important for small businesses to know this isn’t something that is going to take away from their profitability,” says Eric Dale of TAMGA Designs. “In the long run, we honestly believe it’s a net-positive impact on our bottom line, because customers do see it and they do value it.”

According to the PwC’s 2024 Voice of the Consumer Survey, customers are willing to pay an average of 9.7% more for sustainable products.

Audience expectations

As sustainability becomes a priority for consumers, meeting their expectations may make you more competitive. It may even save you work in the future. Research your target audience and examine your competitors’ packaging.

“It’s really important for founders to understand what consumers expect now of beauty brands—everything from packaging to ingredients to your secondary packaging and how it’s received,” says Fluff founder Erika. “Try and make those better decisions from the start because it’s so much easier than having to undo or replace packaging or formulation or componentry down the road.”

Distance

When picking eco-friendly products, consider how far it has to travel to you. If it has to travel a large distance, it may negatively affect the environment. It might even negate your use of sustainable products overall.

If you can’t find a closer alternative, place bigger orders to reduce the frequency of shipments. Or, choose slower shipping speeds, which tend to be more environmentally friendly.

Shelf life

Some eco-friendly products have a shorter shelf life than their less-sustainable counterparts. For example, bioplastics break down faster than regular plastic.

For Hero Packaging, this was a learning curve. “Sometimes we would bring something in, and it wouldn’t sell as well,” says Anaita. “Then the mailers, after nine to 12 months, start to biodegrade. So they actually can’t be used to ship products in.”

Anaita and husband Vik Davé solved this issue by hiring a logistics manager who ensured they ordered the right quantities of products.

Eco-friendly packaging tips

• Ship items in bulk
• Offer a returns program for your empty product containers
• Reduce the size of your packaging

Here are some eco-friendly packaging ideas, with execution advice from ecommerce business owners:

Ship items in bulk

Harriet Simonis, David Fragomeni, and Scott Ferguson first became friends while living in Bali. When surfing the local waves, they were distressed to find the ocean overflowing with single-use plastic packaging and discarded fishing nets. That moment was the catalyst to adopt the zero-waste lifestyles they still practice today.

As they searched for plastic-free and eco-friendly products, they realized something ironic. “A lot of environmentally friendly products come affixed in plastic,” Harriet says. “It almost undoes the good.”

Determined to create a better solution, the trio founded Zero Waste Cartel, a brand of bath, body, and kitchen products in biodegradable or reusable packaging.

The brand’s pledge to go plastic-free came with its own set of distinct challenges. For example, Harriet says the company had a hard time finding a warehouse that would use the compostable mailers it provided because of the extra time and effort involved.

Today, Zero Waste Cartel has a suitable partner in the United States, where most of its customers are. This further reduces its carbon footprint by shortening the shipping distance between warehouse and customers.

“We prefer to ship in bulk, for the dual reason that it’s a better value for customers and better for the environment, too,” Harriet says.

Zero Waste Cartel sells its bamboo toothbrushes only in packs of 10 to encourage customers to plan their purchases or share orders, so products ship in a more sustainable manner. What might seem like an inflexible policy resonates with Zero Waste Cartel’s customers, who see value in bulk purchases for the planet and their own wallets.

Offer a returns program for your empty product containers

Visual artists Tara Pelletier and Jeff Kurosaki are the life and business partners behind Meow Meow Tweet, an organic skin care company that features adorable animal illustrations on its eco-friendly product packaging.

Their love of animals, (also the motivation behind their vegan lifestyle), eventually inspired them to create products made with organic unrefined plant oils, cold-pressed essential oils, and botanicals.

Jeff and Tara want everything they create to either return to the earth or be reusable. Their solid products, like deodorants, soaps, and lip balms, come in biodegradable kraft packages. They package liquid products, such as cleansers, toners, and sunscreen, in recyclable packaging like glass or aluminum bottles.

They also encourage customers to reuse the plastic pumps in its packaging. If not, they ask customers to leave them at a drop-off point so their partner TerraCycle can recycle them. If they don’t have one nearby, customers with at least two pumps can send them back to Meow Meow Tweet, which TerraCycles them.

Reduce the size of your packaging

Holy Lamb Organics has come a long way since its early days when founder Willow Whitton sold bedding out of a repurposed school bus. As its operations have grown, the brand’s packaging has shrunk.

“We keep our boxes as light as possible by not adding extra collateral or material, and vacuum-sealing all mattresses so they ship smaller,” cofounder Jason Schaefer says.

The brand also tries to find other ways to reuse materials. “Our production model is carefully designed to make the most effective use of every cut, and any excess in a cut is used for something else,” cofounder Mindy Schaefer says.

The same goes for the company’s wool suppliers, who use cardboard rolls and kraft paper for their eco-friendly packaging. Scraps return to their suppliers for repurposing.

Take sustainable steps with eco-friendly packaging solutions

All these brands share a desire to be more environmentally responsible. For some, this commitment offered a way to connect with customers around core values. For others, the time, energy, and research to source sustainable packaging solutions felt like the right thing to do.

Depending on your industry, location, and resources, the right packaging and shipping solutions for your business can vary widely. Whatever you choose for your business, your efforts will pay off as more and more customers speak up for the environment with their dollars.

Feature image by Unsplash / Sticker Mule