I hate my plastic mailers! (reducing waste)

As I've gotten higher and higher order volumes, I've come to hate my plastic mailers. I used to love the pretty blue color, but bringing a dozen single use plastic bags that'll be in the trash in 5 days to the post office has made me realize they're a little too wasteful. It's really a shame because (besides the pins) everything else about the packaging to strictly paper.

My solution to the problem is to switch to paper padded mailers. I've found a great option (from ecoenclose) I'm going to start using as soon as I run out of my current stock of plastic mailers! It's made from 100% recycled material, Naturally biodegradable, and is just all together pretty sturdy. I originally thought these where out of budget for me, but I was surprised to see that if I ordered large quantities they're only $0.10 more expensive then my current solution.

There are however a few draw backs, the main one being that these new mailers weigh 1.5 ounces whereas my old ones weighed only 0.2 ounces. This may mean shipping could be ever slightly more expensive in some rare circumstances. The other drawback for me is that I can only get a good rate on these mailers if I order in quantities of 250 at a time. At 1.5 ounces each, that's 23.4 pounds in just mailing packages I need to find a place to store! I haven't gotten my order in yet, but I'm hoping it doesn't take up too much space 😅.

In the end though, I think the drawbacks are worth it. These new mailers are not only more sustainable but are much more robust. In the coming weeks I may try and take a few more steps towards making my shipments more environmentally.

I have an old receipt printer laying around, I may try and repurpose it to print out order receipts. It'll take some hacky coding to get it to work correctly, but it certainly would be nice to not have to use a whole 8.5"x11" paper sheet & have to run it through a printer to get order receipts.