As part of its endeavor to promote sustainable packaging and zero-waste, India’s leading eCommerce market place, Flipkart, has been able to reduce plastic packaging in its own supply chain by about 50%.
Flipkart said it has now started phasing out plastic packaging from its own supply chain in Maharashtra through usage of paper-based packaging starting 1 May, 2020. The company has been driving several initiatives as it pursues sustainable growth, which includes the introduction of eco-friendly paper shreds, replacing poly pouches with recycled paper bags, replacing bubble wraps, and airbags with carton waste shredded material and 2-ply roll, to name a few.
Flipkart said it is actively working with all policymakers, including state governments across the country and other ecosystem stakeholders to understand how it can provide a conducive and feasible transition path to lakhs of its seller partners to gradually adopt sustainable packaging alternatives which could be affordable, scalable and widely available to them.
Flipkart works with over 200,000 local sellers, mostly MSMEs across the country, many of whom also ship customer orders directly and make their own packaging decisions.
“Flipkart is strongly committed to environmental sustainability and is working actively with various partners on long-term sustainability initiatives, helping drive ecosystem awareness. We are pleased with the progress made in our own supply chain to introduce and explore different packaging concepts to have an impact now and in the future,” Rajneesh Kumar, chief corporate affairs officer, Flipkart Group, said.
