Is There a Future for Sustainable Ecommerce Packaging?

(Watch Cary Sherburne’s video interview with Neenah’s Kristen Duncan and Jennifer Dietz about the company’s new Environment Mailer here.)

According to Statistica, global retail ecommerce sales amounted to approximately US$5.2 trillion worldwide in 2021. They project sales to grow 56%, reaching about US$8.2 trillion by 2026. Parcel Monitor states that $870 billion of that is accounted for by ecommerce sales made in the U.S. in 2021, representing 13.2% of all US. retail sales. That number is projected to surpass $1.3 trillion by 2025. That’s a lot of packages. In fact, there were a total of 13.5 billion packages shipped in the U.S. in 2018, and that increased by 37% between 2019 and 2020.

It's hard to nail down how many ecommerce packages that actually translates to because the focus is on sales, not number of packages. Statistica states 24% of total global retail sales will be comprised of ecommerce orders by 2026. Pre-COVID, according to the Washington Post, packages in the U.S. typically accounted for about 5% of postal service delivery volume; during the pandemic, parcel deliver volume surged 70%. And that’s just the USPS!

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About Cary Sherburne

Cary Sherburne is a well-known author, journalist and marketing consultant whose practice is focused on marketing communications strategies for the printing and publishing industries.

Cary Sherburne is available for speaking engagements and consulting projects. To get more information contact us.

Please offer your feedback to Cary. She can be reached at [email protected].

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