La Poste creates a gamechanger process to make reusable packaging more competitive in France

More than one billion parcels are shipped in France each year. Instead of waste, La Poste turned this into a one billion opportunity!

E-commerce is quickly becoming a major ecological issue. While La Poste has already been working for several years to reduce the empty space inside parcels and reduce the carbon footprint of transportation, several challenges remain to make e-commerce shipments kinder to the planet. The latest initiative is to enable the broader use of reusable packaging.

To make reusable packaging a standard is not something that we can do by ourselves. No company or innovator can instigate the change alone — it requires collaboration with all relevant stakeholders to move the needle forward.

Good news: La Poste is marking an important step this fall and has developed a new process for the empty returns of reusable packaging. The process will enable reusable packaging providers such as RePack to offer our service to more brands and their customers at more competitive prices.

La Poste is committing to making reuse more accessible to all

Let's kick things off with some interesting figures:

• 75% of French people consider eco-responsible deliveries essential. The figure reaches 82% among those under 25!
• 85% of French people believe packaging reusability to be important - either to return a parcel or as a helpful item at home
• 63% of French people have more confidence in a company that offers sustainable products

The consumer demand is leaning toward reusable packaging, but this option is generally the most costly for the customer.

Called "Retour Emballage Réutilisable", La Poste's new set-up will industrialise the empty packaging return as much as possible, reducing processing costs and therefore allow to make reusable packaging more accessible to online businesses and their customers.

La Poste will be offering their new pricing from November to all reusable packaging providers!

By helping make reusable packaging as competitive as single-use packaging, La Poste is unlocking a huge opportunity for reuse in e-commerce.

RePack is participating and working closely with La Poste to build an alternative return channel in France.

In addition to this new "Reusable Packaging Return", La Poste has been working closely with RePack this year to decentralise our reuse model. A decentralised reuse system reduced transportations distances, emissions and costs. Decentralisation also means increasing the number and type of return points. The benefit in doing so is multi-faceted; on the one hand, it increases the convenience for consumer returns whilst also helping to reduce the costs associated with reverse logistics.

The French Loop we set up with La Poste provides a local, alternative return channel in France and offers RePack at a more competitive price to all e-commerce merchants.

To perfect the decentralisation of our reusable packaging model, we keep on working with La Poste and its partners to replicate our return hub right in France. We are training new teams to sort, clean and restock RePacks in a new facility in France to serve all our French customers! More to come soon!