Eco-Friendly Private Label Printing Grows As Businesses Go Green

May 21, 2019May 15, 2019Chad S

Sustainable products have a reputation for coming with a high price tag. Not only are the materials used to build sustainable packaging seen as more expensive than their nonbiodegradable alternatives, but businesses also worry that the quality and strength of the packaging itself suffers when made from eco-friendly material.

However, many companies are switching to biodegradable packaging despite its perceived challenges. Sustainable packaging has advanced to the point where biodegradable products perform just as well — if not better — than non biodegradable alternatives, and consumers are willing to reward a business that does its part to protect the environment. Not to mention, switching to sustainable packaging plays an invaluable role in reducing a business’s carbon footprint.

As a result, businesses are increasingly embracing green packaging practices — especially retailers who want to set their private label products apart from the brands they stock. To start implementing these packaging practices, businesses must find a high-quality, durable, eco-friendly label for the product.

What Makes a Label Eco-Friendly?

Not all labels efficiently break down when discarded by consumers; labels must satisfy some important criteria before they’re certified as eco-friendly. To ensure your product labels are as green as possible, make sure to:Use recycled materials. Whether the labels are constructed from post-consumer materials or composed of byproducts from other manufacturing processes, labels made from recycled material help divert the amount of waste heading to landfills. Using recycled materials also reduces the amount of energy that it takes to construct labels and other products.

Employ green manufacturing processes. Many label manufacturing companies use specialized processes that render plastic and other materials more efficiently biodegradable. Some businesses also use specialized adhesives to make labels more easily separable from their packaging in an effort to enhance recycling process efficiency.

Incorporate renewable materials. Many companies use renewable resources like wheat, corn, and other starchy materials to make polylactic acid (PLA), a biodegradable adhesive that can act as an alternative to fossil fuel-based compounds. Other businesses replace tree-based papers with those made from bamboo, cotton, or sugarcane, which grow much more quickly than trees while producing the same level of quality in the end product.

Leading Brands Are Switching to Eco-Friendly Labeling

Growing consumer interest in reducing our collective carbon footprint has inspired many high-profile, recognizable brands to switch to green labeling practices.

Walmart and Sam’s Club are making a big move toward recyclable packaging. These big-box stores have pledged to use environmentally friendly labels on all their private-label products by 2025. This will result in more sustainable packaging for more than 30,000 products, and the company hopes that its actions will set the standard for its industry peers.

Colgate–Palmolive has committed to using 100% biodegradable packaging for all its products by 2025. The brand also aims to use 25% recycled material when developing its plastic packaging. In doing so, Colgate–Palmolive seeks to reduce the amount of plastic packaging that regularly ends up in landfills and waterways.

Another corporation that’s boldly shifting to recyclable packaging is Aldi. The grocery chain recently announced a plan to switch all packaging to recyclable, reusable, or compostable material by 2025.

By next year, Aldi-brand packages will have How2Recycle labels, which instruct customers on how to properly recycle their products. Because over 90% of the products Aldi carries are privately labeled, this practice will hugely impact the amount of waste the chain produces.

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All About Amazon’s Private Labels Business

May 17, 2019May 15, 2019Chad S

In Amazon’s early days, enterprising merchants carved out lucrative niches for themselves by identifying what wasn’t being sold on the site, sourcing those products at low prices and offering them as third-party sellers. This phenomenon helped the ecommerce platform serve more consumers while mitigating its risk and made Amazon the so-called Everything Store it is today. Eventually, it also inspired a change in the mega retailer’s business model.

Amazon Private Label Company

In 2007, Amazon launched its own private labels business by taking a page from third-party sellers: Find popular products on the site and sell them at a lower price, in this case under a “brand” name created by Amazon itself. First was luxury bed-and-bath brand Pinzon. Then Amazon followed with everyday-items brand Amazon Basics in 2009. The retailer’s private label business has since grown to include 119 brands, per a recent study from research firm Gartner L2, including Amazon Essentials, which features apparel, and paper goods brand Presto.

And the list is growing. Business intelligence firm Feedvisor found Amazon is aggressively pushing into private labels. Oweise Khazi, senior principal at Gartner and lead Amazon analyst, called the market “potentially a gold mine” in part because so many consumers trust Amazon.

But third-party sellers and their private labels haven’t gone anywhere. In fact, per a Feedvisor report, 56% of all Amazon marketplace sellers earned revenue from private labels in 2018, up from 32% in 2017. They also account for 58% of sales in 2018, for a total of $160 billion—and have a compound annual growth rate of 52% since 1999. By contrast, Amazon’s compound annual growth rate for first-party sales over that 20-year period was 25%, from $1.6 billion to $117 billion.

As Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos wrote this year in his annual letter to shareholders, “Third-party sellers are kicking our first-party butt.”

And yet it’s not quite that simple. Amazon collects fees from its third-party sellers—for being on the site, storing merchandise in the retailer’s warehouses and fulfilling orders. As a result, Amazon is in competition with the very sellers that helped it gain dominance, and its relationship with these third-party vendors has turned into something like the field of candidates for the Democratic nomination in the 2020 presidential election: They’re rivals, but they also have an interest in each other’s success.

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Walmart Re-imagines Private Label Packaging To Reduce Waste

May 16, 2019May 15, 2019Chad S

Walmart is looking to drive sales through sustainability by committing to new plastic packaging waste reduction rules for its private label brands.

The company announced that these new commitments are expected to impact over 30,000 SKUs.

According to the company, the move is designed to help get to the heart of the waste problem by focusing on the retailer’s private brand packaging, building upon existing efforts to reduce plastic waste in Walmart U.S. and Sam’s Club operations, and encouraging national brand suppliers to set similar packaging goals.

Company executives highlighted that the company is working with suppliers to expand efforts to improve the sustainability of its private brand product packaging, with an emphasis on increasing the chance of being able to get recycled and making it easier for customers.

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