How eco-friendly is your box?

It's the 22nd of April 2022 which marks this year's Earth Day!

For Earth Day we'd thought we'd share how Bonnie Boxes Ltd. tries to make Eco-Friendly choices when it comes to business, gifts, packaging and postage.

Ways The Scot Box by Bonnie Boxes is eco-friendly

1. Compostable boxes The postal boxes we put your gifts in are compostable, and when our courier has them stocked, made of recycled compostable material.

2. Recycled Tissue and packing paper Most of the tissue paper we use in our boxes are made from recycled paper. We also order and use recycled brown packing paper and padding that we wrap our compostable boxes in.

3. Reducing our waste We are constantly changing and looking for ways to change how we re-use or dispose of our waste. Any boxes with printing errors are kept to reuse as storage, posting other business materials or gifts, donated to people who need storage/moving boxes, composted on site, used as kindling during the winter months, donated for art projects/crafts, or sent to recycling facilities.

4. Reducing Carbon footprint This is still one of our most challenging areas of keeping our very small business eco-friendly as we can't always guarantee what happens to our boxes travel wise during delivery. However, so far we try to consolidate orders so more boxes are posted at the same time, reducing the amount of transit back and forth for pick up and drop off's to and from our hub. We are in the process of researching exactly how much Co2 is used during transit after our boxes leave us and working with our couriers to make the best choices when it comes to Co2 footprints. One of our favourite things about using Royal Mail is that they actually tell us the average Co2 per parcel whenever we order your postage. However, there is still a long way to go in making changes to reduce carbon footprint for all subscription box companies so we welcome any information we may not have found in our research.

5. Digital instead of paper The plus about running an e-commerce business is that we use a lot less paper not only for filing, accounting, and data, but also in the way we advertise and talk to our customers. By investing more in digital advertisement, communication, and filing, this limits the amount of printing needed thus reducing our electricity, ink, and paper wastage.

6. Trying to pick sustainable gifts and gift-makers We love to work with sustainable businesses who try to reduce their wastage and carbon footprint when making their gifts, some of our favourite environmentally conscious creators are people like Catherine Redgate , Charlie Dear and Planet Soap.

Natural Handmade cold-pressed soap by Planet Soap

7. Keeping up-to-date on the latest ways businesses can make eco-friendly changes. While we are a small business we spend a lot of time signing up, researching, and attending webinars/seminars on ways our e-commerce business can make eco-friendly changes and choices. We are lucky to have environmental conscious corporations and charities in Scotland that aim to help business reduce their negative environmental impact such as Visit Scotland, gov.uk, Environment Scotland, and Scottish Enterprise.