Packages without boxes: bol.com fails to pack 7 million items this year

This year bol.com will send twice as many articles without a cardboard shipping box compared to last year. In doing so, bol.com is saving a huge amount of packaging material and further reducing its own CO2 emissions. The online platform began in 2019 by scrapping the recognizable box for 3.5 million items. By 2020, 7 million items are expected to no longer be packed for shipment. Only when it is really necessary, for example for the protection of the item, does bol.com pack an item as sustainably as possible. Currently, approximately 20 percent of bol.com’s total CO2 emissions come from packaging.

Climate-neutral shopping by 2025
“From a sustainability perspective, we don’t want to ship unnecessary packaging,” explains Jori Ebskamp, CSR lead at bol.com. “And the same goes for the padding material that goes into those cardboard boxes. That’s why in 2019 we started to stop packing items such as fans, deep fryers, irons, printers, coffee makers and diapers. Our own packaging of these items is sturdy enough for transportation from our warehouse to the customer’s front door. All we do is stick a shipping label on them.”

Bol.com thus saves a huge amount of packaging material and the CO2 emissions associated with its production. Bol.com aims for climate-neutral shopping in 2025, which means that the direct footprint is reduced to 0 grams of CO2 emissions per package. By eliminating the shipping box as much as possible, this ambition comes another step closer.

Airbeds and Christmas trees
In the past few months, bol.com examined its entire assortment of 23 million items to critically determine what can be shipped without a bol.com box. Ebskamp: “In addition, colleagues in the distribution center are researching which articles, with a small adjustment to the original packaging, are even more suitable for unpacked shipment. We share this information with our suppliers, who in turn make the packaging suitable for online shopping. This enables us to ship more items without a cardboard box every year. Now, for example, we also ship slides, airbeds, buggies and Christmas trees.”

Sales partners also more sustainable
More than 30,000 sales partners now sell their products via bol.com. Some of them also outsource the logistics to the online platform and store their stock in the bol.com distribution center. Bol.com assesses whether these products are suitable to be shipped unpacked, possibly after a small modification. In this way bol.com wants to support its partners to package and deliver more sustainably.