Sendle’s ‘Grizzly Truth’ installation illustrates environmental cost of online shopping
Image credit: Sendle
Today, Sendle — a Certified B Corp and 100 percent
carbon-neutral shipping carrier for small businesses — unveiled a 10-foot
installation of a grizzly bear, constructed of recycled cardboard boxes, at
Seattle’s Lake Union Park. The sculpture, by Canadian artist
Laurence Vallières, aims to highlight the
environmental impact of the 165 billion packages shipped in the US each
year.
In the United States, Sendle’s package volumes increased by 124 percent in 2021
compared to the previous year — after two years of pandemic-induced online
shopping and demand for next-day delivery. The installation is a reminder to
consumers that there’s an environmental cost to our online shopping addiction.
The artist chose the threatened grizzly bear as an inspiration for the
installation; there are only 1,500 left in the US, outside of Alaska, as a
result of the impacts of habitat loss and changing climate. The public is
invited to interact with Vallières’ grizzly bear while taking a moment to
reflect on their online shopping and how it impacts the planet.
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While the pulp and paper
industry
isn’t directly linked to habitat loss for grizzly bears, many other species and
huge swaths of forest are impacted by our endless need for cardboard boxes.
Thus, Sendle has a few additional
challenges for
consumers, small businesses and the shipping & logistics industry to fight
habitat loss and the climate crisis by conserving cardboard.
"Whether or not we shop online isn’t the question. eCommerce is here to stay.
But we can all do our part to make online shopping more sustainable,” says
Veena Harbaugh, Sendle’s Director of Sustainability. “As consumers, we have
options. Who we buy from and how we purchase and ship are powerful choices that
have a cascading effect along the supply chain, and can either harm or
regenerate the world around us."
As part of its ongoing initiatives to educate the public about sustainable
practices, Sendle invites consumers to think before they ship and shop from
sustainability-minded businesses that are working to mitigate the negative
impact of ecommerce on the planet.
Sendle is the only 100 percent carbon-neutral shipping service in the United
States and Australia, and has offset 19.5 billion miles of carbon to date.
The company is once again calling for an ‘environmental awakening' across its
highly polluting industry — echoing the sentiments of co-founder James Chin
Moody, who said in
2021:
“Every product sold online and shipped to a customer represents a vast web of
carbon-emitting activity,” he said. “It’s so important that right now, our
industry comes together to acknowledge our growing footprint, and that we work
together on long-term solutions. With the way things are going, failing to grow
sustainably carries too many risks for a business’ operations, its bottom line
and the planet.”
Following the conclusion of the exhibition, the sculpture will be broken down
and recycled by Republic Services’ cardboard recycling center.
Cheeky Allbirds campaign urges consumers to support ‘the Amazon you truly can’t live without’
Image credit: Keep the Amazon Prime
Also unveiled this week, Allbirds’ KeeptheAmazonPrime.com
campaign uses humor and consumer love for nostalgia to poke fun at society’s
materialism and need for instant-gratification retail, even at the expense of
one of our most critical resources (the Amazon rainforest).
With a spoof, early-2000s-era website and infomercial, Allbirds is calling for
users to “subscribe” to ‘Keep the Amazon Prime’ and collecting donations
for Amazon Watch — a nonprofit dedicated to
protecting the rainforest and advancing the rights of Indigenous peoples in the
Amazon Basin. Along with the creative platform and infomercial is a full-page ad
in The New York Times, paid social support, and targeted outdoor display ads
in Seattle.
The infomercial features short clips of the real Amazon, advertising the
rainforest as a “service” that offers “unlimited streaming – of actual streams”
and “complimentary removal of CO2.” The tongue-in-cheek video serves as an
icebreaker with ridiculous (yet, relatable) examples of the quick-purchase
products advertised to us daily — before a rug-pull brings attention back to the
Amazon rainforest, and its importance to the planet’s health.
“We were drawn to the insight of ‘remember when the word Amazon meant the
rainforest’, and began building on this idea, which led us to
keeptheamazonprime.com,”
explains
Kate Ridley, Allbirds’ Chief Brand Officer. “We worked with Wrestler as our
creative partner and together we wanted the content to be engaging, and
entertaining, while highlighting the important message of protecting the Amazon.
We hope this campaign resonates with our community in a thought-provoking way
and reminds them of the other Amazon, encouraging all of us to think about how
we can be better environmental stewards.”
Amazon, the world’s largest retailer, has made bold commitments to rein in
its massive carbon footprint — it co-founded The Climate
Pledge
in 2019, and in 2021 launched two fulfillment
programs
designed to extend the life of returned or overstock inventory — but there is
evidence that the ecommerce giant
has been undercounting
its carbon emissions. Regardless of how these factors shake out, it’s a reminder
that only substantive action — not creative corporate
accounting
— will save us from the climate crisis.
For its part, Allbirds has been working to walk its sustainability talk by
building supply chains for regeneratively
farmed
and renewable
materials
and developing an open-sourcing its Carbon Footprint
Calculator
to drive an uptick in climate action by the fashion industry.
Though the Amazon rainforest has long been considered the world’s largest carbon
sink and a critical tool in our fight against catastrophic climate change,
devastating
fires
and continued rampant
deforestation
from industry in recent years have severely affected the forest’s ability to
sequester carbon — a 2021
study found that the
Amazon released about 20 percent more CO2 into the atmosphere than it took in
over the period from 2010-2019.
‘Keep the Amazon Prime’ challenges the greater retail industry to do its part
for our natural ecosystem, using comedy to bring attention back to our duty to
protect nature through more thoughtful consumerism. Allbirds will be matching
all donations up to US$50,000 and will be hosting education content from Amazon
Watch across its social channels.
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Sustainable Brands Staff
Published Apr 22, 2022 2pm EDT / 11am PDT / 7pm BST / 8pm CEST