Plastic Packaging – Is there a way out?

I work part-time at J.Crew, an American clothing company that took the world by storm with its crew necks and merino wool sweaters and basically invented a cultural fashion cult around it. Sometimes I get put on back-of-house duty, where I am in charge of handling the shipments that come in on a weekly basis. I have noticed that every dress shirt, every jewellery piece, etc came in individual plastic packaging. Needless to say, I felt a pang of guilt every time I opened up a new item and wanted to know if there was a way around plastic packaging.

I found a post about Patagonia’s plastic packaging, and their little internal case study about whether polybags were necessary when it came to shipping clothes around the globe. The polybags (plastic packages) basically keep the clothing dry and away from mold. Patagonia experimented with 40 items that were unbagged through the shipping system, and found that almost all items were in poor condition to be put on retail shelves. This indicated that it is almost impossible to ship products without polybags, especially via sea transportation where there is a high chance of mold growing on the clothing pieces.

I realized that this becomes a trade off for companies like Patagonia where they value customers’ opinions on every aspect of their business, especially in terms of sustainability. If Patagonia were to get rid of polybags, the clothing might become moldy during the shipment process, which can incur greater costs to the company than if they were to use polybags. A solution to this could be to package more items in one bigger polybag, rather than individual ones. Another way is to reduce the size of the polybag used, to match the actual size of the garment. (A pair of leggings doesn’t necessarily require an XL plastic bag) What I’ve noticed J.Crew doing is having a full size run of a particular garment (from XXS-XL) all packaged in ONE polybag, delivered in ONE box. Since we are able to recycle cardboard boxes easily, this has become an effective way of reducing the production of polybags. What do you think?