Online shopping has a waste problem.
Walk down any street on garbage day, and it’s easy to see bins overflowing with boxes from Amazon, Walmart, and others. But after years of investing to increase delivery speeds, the new arms race for e-commerce retailers is shifting toward packaging.
As online shopping accounts for a greater share of total retail sales, brands are being forced to design products around ease of shipping, rather than standing out on crowded store shelves.
Greenpeace criticized “Singles’ Day”—China’s version of a Black Friday shopping holiday—as an “ecological disaster for the planet,” creating over 300,000 tons ...
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