Former weatherwoman Helga van Leur recently shared a photo of two small jars of cream packed in a large shoe box. She writes: ‘What do you think: is there still room for improvement with shipping boxes?’
Some followers believe that Van Leur should have cycled to the store, ‘with a reusable bag’. The weatherwoman herself thinks that sending by envelope would have been a good alternative.
According to Marcel Keuenhof, advisor at the Knowledge Institute for Sustainable Packaging (KIDV), the box issue is quite simple. “Smaller companies usually only have a limited number of boxes of a certain size in stock. So if one just doesn’t fit, a box will immediately follow that is a bit bigger,” says the packaging technologist.
“From the point of view of automation, it is logical that people prefer to work with boxes rather than small envelopes, because boxes are easy to recognize and easy to pick up.”
In addition, no matter how small a package may be in principle, there must be room for an address label. And they are often quite large.
Pack automatically
Keuenhof emphasizes that the ‘big boys’, such as Zalando, Amazon and Bol.com pack in a completely different way. “There, the process is largely automated,” he says. “They also have packaging machines that cut the boxes exactly to size.”
“That’s right,” says Joost Morel, spokesperson at Bol.com. “Since 2017 we have been packing articles by machine and since 2021 we even have a multi-packing machine.” The latter machine can pack different products in one box. Very handy if you order multiple products from the webshop.
By custom packaging, more items can be taken with the delivery person. “And that also results in less CO2 emissions,” says Morel. Bol.com has 34 million articles in its range and works with 51,000 sales partners.
These partners can choose to let Bol.com do the entire packaging, distribution and shipping process. “It is also possible that we only do the shipping for them, or that they purchase packing material from us,” says Morel.
How your order eventually arrives depends on all these factors. In general, the larger the webshop, the more box sizes, the less ‘packaged air’.
800 packages per minute
According to the Bol.com spokesperson, it is therefore not often that customers complain about an unnecessarily large box. Simply because it is becoming less and less common.
“With 75 percent of our orders we no longer have to use filling material, which is also a great advantage in terms of sustainability. But you can’t always prevent it.”
Let’s also not forget: boxes around a product are often simply necessary. “For example, because of product protection, or for privacy reasons,” says Niels Agatz, professor of last-mile supply chains at the Rotterdam School of Management. “You would rather not transport an iPhone recognizably.”
Without box?
According to Agatz, experiments are underway, including at PostNL and Bol.com, to see whether some products can be sent without an extra packaging box. Because why would you put a well-packaged vacuum cleaner in an extra box?
“But it’s difficult to fish out the right products that are suitable for this in an automated process. That makes it complex.”
According to Agatz, the fact that extra delivery vans would now be driving around due to the ‘unnecessary transport of air’ is not the case. “With regular buses, space is generally not a limiting factor,” he says. “Time is often a limiting factor: how many addresses can a delivery person visit in a day?”
The professor does not recognize that distribution centers prefer to work with boxes rather than envelopes. “Coincidentally, I was recently at a distribution center in Nieuwegein where small mail items are processed in an automated manner. Maybe one of them falls off the belt, but I don’t think that’s a reason to just put a box around it,” says he.
“And if envelopes are really small, they go with the regular mail flow.”
Don’t bother
Agatz mainly sees that there are now few incentives for postal companies to work with more different box sizes. The cardboard costs are low and the difference in terms of rates is relatively small. “Then you won’t go to great lengths for a suitable box if it doesn’t matter in terms of cost,” he says.
So there is still quite a bit to improve, with those shipping boxes. Packaging technologist Marcel Keuenhof fears that more boxes will eventually be added. “That we can buy less and less offline and that online shopping is becoming even more massive.”
Although that rising turnover may also have an advantage: “That more companies then have the money to invest in sustainability.”
2023-05-29 06:31:53
#small #order #box #large
