Solutions of sustainable packaging in footwear and apparel industry

Abstract

Footwear and apparel industry creates large amounts of waste, which cause environmental concerns through all value chain. Therefore, the aim of our research, as systematic review, was to identify, summarize, and evaluate existing sustainable packaging solutions in the apparel and footwear industry. The study followed the principles of a systematic review,research methodology, using a website search; Phyton programming language libraries were used to develop a web scraper. A sample included apparel and footwear brands that operate internationally around the World. The qualitative analysis method of thematic content clustering was then used to identify, summarize, and evaluate the results. The results have shown that less than half of the brands announced their long-term commitment to switching to sustainable packaging. Less, 84 brand have certificates for all or certain types of their packaging. There are 60 brands that offer reusable packaging services through collaboration with packaging providers. Only 52 of 400 brands have invested in eco-friendly packaging solutions and 32 joined to Responsible Packaging Movement and Ellen McArthur foundation. We found out that most of the brands with the sustainable statements and packaging solutions are from Europe (54.50 %). Others are from North America (28.25 %), Australia (10.10 %) and Asia (3 %). As expected, the clothing categories with the most sustainable packaging solutions are clothing for women and men, less footwear and accessories. The results of our study suggest that sustainable packaging is highly dependent on the social and environmental impacts, as well as the business and supply chain circumstances associated with each product packaging system. Apparel and footwear brands are generally committed to finding better packaging solutions for their products, although innovation in this area is still reluctantly shared.