We care so much about our beautiful Planet Earth here at Milk Tooth and want to do our part in keeping the environment tidy. A large element of this is cutting right back on the use of plastic in the packaging we use. We also reuse existing packaging where we can, rather than always buying new.
Goodbye plastic!
We use cardboard boxes to pack orders as much as possible at Milk Tooth. This is for a couple of reasons - they're more likely to be reused by you, our wonderful customer; they're easier to recycle; they break down more easily; and - importantly - they do an excellent job of protecting beautiful items such as wooden toys.
We do also use mailing satchels. Most of the satchels we use are home compostable or biodegradable, but we do have some old stock of plastic satchels and plastic Australia Post pre-paid satchels that needs to be exhausted before we can say we've 200% switched over to compostable and biodegradable. Bear with us here, we'll be done with them soon and cannot wait!
In terms of wrapping and void fill, we use brown paper, wood filings, butcher's paper, shredded cardboard, and other recyclable fill as much as possible. Sometimes, we use plastic air pockets, foam, and plastic bubble wrap, however, most of the plastic we use for wrapping and void fill is reused - it's the packaging and fill sent to us by our suppliers (more on this below).
Milk Tooth has also recently ordered in some GreenWrap as a trial, to see if it performs as well as bubble wrap and can become our new best friend in fragile item protection.
Reusing existing packaging
If you've ordered from Milk Tooth before, you might have noticed that we try to reuse packaging from our suppliers where we can. So you might receive a wicker basket in a box branded with a wooden toy brand, or a set of blocks in a box branded with a bed linen brand.
You might also notice that the packaging and fill used inside the box is a mixture of paper, shredded cardboard, and/or void fill. This is because we keep all of the protective packaging our suppliers use to send our goodies and pop it back into your parcel as it heads out the door. Where we can, we'll even reuse the soft plastic sent to us by some suppliers - folded up it can create padding; scrunched up it can create void fill.
All of this does mean that sometimes your package might not look like the belle of the ball as it arrives at your home. We hope you can forgive us for this, as we think it's just so important to reuse before buying brand new when it comes to packaging. We'll sometimes pop a sticker explaining our eco-friendly approach to reusing packaging onto the outside of your parcel.
What have we missed? Do you have a suggestion for how Milk Tooth can become even more eco-friendly in its packaging? Please do let us know as we're always open to improving how we do things.
© Milk Tooth
