84% Of Shoppers Buy With Sustainability in Mind. Here’s What That Means for Your Business

Consumers are getting serious about values-driven shopping. A whopping 84% of them say a company’s environmental practices influence their spending decisions. And 40% of consumers are open to paying extra for eco-conscious products during the holiday shopping season.

For the sake of your customers — and the planet — it’s critical to make sustainable ecommerce a priority. From more mindful packaging to greener delivery options, here are a few practical ways to make a real and lasting impact. 

Optimize shipping and fulfillment for a greener holiday season

As soon as a customer clicks the Buy button, the countdown to delivery begins. On any given day, shoppers expect zippy fulfillment, but during the holidays, fast delivery is even more important. How do brands balance lightning-fast fulfillment with sustainability? You can get the best of both worlds with optimized routing, environmentally friendly workflows, and integrated data that helps you track your carbon footprint. 

With the right order management strategies and inventory management tools, you can determine the most efficient fulfillment flows, and plan the fastest routes with the lowest emissions. Even better? AI trained on data from your order management system can do this in an instant, automatically.


With store associate apps, you can turn your brick-and-mortar locations into fulfillment centers and allow employees to complete curbside pick-up orders. This offers customers convenience and eliminates the need for last-mile delivery. Bonus points if you encourage customers to choose sustainable fulfillment options with incentives like loyalty rewards or discounts. For example, you can offer a percentage off a customer’s next purchase if they choose a more sustainable “slow delivery.”

Take a closer look at your supply chain

Order management is just one part of the supply chain. You can also home in on your suppliers’ environmental impact, and compare it to your sustainability goals. Do your partners make environmentally sound decisions? The answers to this question can help minimize waste in the supply chain. 

To involve suppliers in your sustainable ecommerce efforts — and make sure you’re all on the same page — communicate your expectations through a supplier code of conduct. After they agree to the terms, consider performing audits to gauge performance. 

You can also build your own digital marketplace to localize supply networks and reduce emissions. This is becoming a popular model as businesses seek ways to combat supply chain issues and meet consumer demands for greener business practices. In fact, more than one-third of commerce professionals are prioritizing adding marketplace features to their existing ecommerce site. A digital marketplace immediately expands your network of sellers and increases the likelihood of delivery from nearby suppliers.  

Promote sustainable ecommerce with a resale program 

Sustainability efforts should start with your business processes, but that’s not where they have to end. Your customers want to play an active role, too. Give them the opportunities they’re looking for by implementing convenient, engaging experiences throughout the journey. 

This can range from circular fashion initiatives, furniture buyback programs, beauty bottle recycling campaigns, and more. While encouraging customers to participate in your brand’s sustainability efforts, this also helps build loyalty and shows that you understand your customers’ values. For example, Madewell Forever is the brand’s effort to keep textiles out of landfills. Through the program and a partnership with ThredUp, customers can turn in used clothing to any store location, or shop vintage and preloved apparel online.  

Selling previously owned items through online marketplaces to buyers who reuse, recycle, or resell them is known as recommerce. The recommerce market is expected to reach $276 billion by 2028. Today, a staggering 85% of shoppers regularly buy and sell secondhand goods. With this in mind, adding a recommerce marketplace to your digital storefront can be a winning holiday strategy, especially as consumers embrace these options as a way to combat the rising costs of new goods.

Prioritize transparency and a data-first approach

As new legislation passes and customer expectations around sustainability continue to grow, brands will need evidence of their progress rather than vague or unfulfilled promises. To avoid greenwashing, stay transparent about your efforts, and connect them to data and success metrics. One way to do this? Furniture and design brand MillerKnoll prioritizes eco-friendly materials throughout its product portfolio. The company even uses an environmental calculator that lets customers see the materials breakdown of every product. 

You can also use carbon accounting to calculate the progress you’ve made on your sustainability journey for internal and external stakeholders. The right tools can help you track initiatives across your organization so you can celebrate success and course-correct quickly if you get off track. 

The best place to start? Communicate your efforts 

Most shoppers (78%) want to buy from environmentally friendly companies, but don’t know how to identify them. If you’ve made the effort to develop sustainable ecommerce strategies, make sure your customers — and potential customers — know all about it. Otherwise, it’s a huge missed opportunity, especially since shoppers may pass on your products if they don’t find explicitly stated sustainable options. So, how do you promote your initiatives to like-minded customers?

Consider messaging at every stage of the journey: on your homepage, within product descriptions and detail pages, on packaging, and even in shipping options. Take these moments as opportunities to paint a picture for your customers that gives them real-world examples of how your brand treats the planet — and how they can be part of it.