Logistics & Fulfilment

How you can make your delivery satchels sustainable

As the world continues its march toward a more ecologically sustainable future, and consumers increasingly want more sustainable action, finding ways to include recyclable materials into packaging is becoming an important step for all delivery firms. 

Retailers have been pushing toward offering more sustainable options for customers at checkout, such as paper and reusable bags, but many delivery firms still deliver goods in the same old plastic satchels.

And, while there is a lot of talk about compostable and biodegradable plastics being a strong replacement, these bags are made from all new resources and do little to address the plastics already clogging up our landfills and waterways. 

This is what sustainable bag manufacturer Blu Print sought to address when creating the Enviro 80 satchel – a courier bag that is made up to 80 per cent recycled, post-consumer waste plastic.

“We’re making the bags out of rubbish,” said Blu Print director Robert Hanna.

“There’s no perfect solution for delivering goods. Compostable, biodegradable and recyclable all come with their flaws, and disposed of incorrectly will pose a risk to our environment.

“The onus to act in an environmentally friendly way lies with the consumer once they receive a satchel, and it’s our responsibility to provide a product that they can take action with correctly and easily. This is why we made the Enviro 80 as easy as possible to recycle through our partnership with RedCycle, which has recycling bins widely accessible at over 2000 Woolworths and Coles around Australia.”

This means that the bags, if recycled properly, will never enter the waste stream and can continue being remade and reused.

Blu Print is also working with a number of other high profile players in the field, such as Aramex, Australia Post, Couriers Please and Kmart.

For every one hundred Enviro 80 bags used, 80 in total are made from waste. For every 100,000 satchels made – which weighs in at 3,080 kgs – 2464 kgs of plastic has been diverted from landfill and reused, rather than left to clog up the ecosystem. 

Plus, that’s 2464 kgs of new plastics that weren’t created.

Since Blu Print introduced the Enviro 80 to the market it has been able to stop 40 million new plastic satchels from entering the environment: a figure equal to 960,000 kgs, which is the same as 1920 full pallets of plastic, or 96 20-foot containers. 

“We understand that plastic’s a bad word,” Hanna said. 

“However, if everyone starts using paper or cartons we may start running low on trees, so this may not be a long term viable option.

“So, it’s about getting people thinking in a different way. We can use plastic to our advantage, it just needs to be done properly.”

If you want to get in touch with Blu Print and learn more about using the Enviro 80 courier satchel in your business, click here.