Flipkart removes single-use plastic across its 70+ fulfilment centres

Delivering on its public commitment to move to plastic-free packaging in its own supply chain by 2021, Flipkart has successfully removed all single-use plastic packaging used across its fulfilment centres in India. Achieved across more than 70 facilities of Flipkart across the country, home-grown e-commerce giant eliminated single-use plastic packaging by introducing the scalable sustainable alternatives such as eco-friendly paper shreds, replacing poly pouches with recycled paper bags, replacing bubble wraps with carton waste shredded material and 2 Ply roll to name a few.

Throughout this process, Flipkart has also ensured that it is fully compliant with all EPR regulations and through its network of recyclers, the equivalent quantity of single-use plastic going to consumers is fully recycled.

"At Flipkart, we place great emphasis on sustainable and responsible business practices. Moving towards 100% single-use plastic elimination is one of the significant steps we have taken towards fulfilling our commitment to creating a sustainable ecosystem. We achieved this while navigating a tough year impacted by Covid and are proud that our teams kept the priorities in line. We are now focused on enabling our seller ecosystem to adopt sustainable packaging alternatives as well, and to create positive environmental and social impact across the entire supply chain," says Hemant Badri, Senior Vice-President and Head of Supply Chain at Flipkart.

As the next step, Flipkart is now working with its seller partners, who fulfil customer orders directly from their locations, to educate them and enable them to move towards alternative materials. The company claims to be actively working with the ecosystem as well to understand how it can best implement other initiatives to create a more circular economy for plastics. And through these proactive interventions and guidance, Flipkart has already achieved a 27% reduction in the use of single-use plastic packaging in its seller fulfillments.

Another initiative taken by Flipkart includes 'E-commerce ready packaging', where Flipkart has been able to ship close to 15% of products without adding a secondary layer of packaging.

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