Flipkart Group joins Canopy commitments

Two e-commerce leaders in India have joined a responsible sourcing commitment for the development of their private brand products, and how they package and ship items, in collaboration with Canopy, a nonprofit environmental organization.

Flipkart and Myntra in India said by working with Canopy and its Pack4Good and CanopyStyle programs, the companies, both under the Flipkart Group, will shift towards sustainable sourcing of forest-derived products and pilot alternative next-generation solutions to transition away from forests for raw materials when rolling out its owned brand products and down the supply chain. The two companies will encourage their national brand partners to source similarly.

Canopy has collaborated with more than 750 companies, including Amazon and its private brand fashion products, committing to using fabrics that protect endangered forests. Myntra is a fashion and lifestyle online retailer and Flipkart is India’s leading online consumer goods marketplace.

With its store brand products and other initiatives, Flipkart and Myntra will focus on the following activities over the next three years:

• exploring sourcing or designing of reusable/refillable shipping boxes to reduce corrugated paper and paperboard;
• encouraging the use of recycled, reusable and/or FSC certified paper and packaging as well as sourcing products with responsibly sourced man-made cellulosic fibers;
• design and implement e-commerce, shipping, display and wrapping systems that minimize the use of packaging materials;
• increase utilization of recycled materials in packaging;
• utilize reusable packaging systems for intra business applications;
• increase the use of digital communication, marketing and accounting systems 
• adopt best practices including researching and applying emerging and circular economy innovations;
• increasing the use of responsibly sourced man-made cellulosic fiber for private label products including rayon/viscose, lyocell, and modal.

“Flipkart as a homegrown e-commerce marketplace is committed to creating a sustainable environment by sourcing responsibly while creating sustainable alternatives for business needs. In this endeavour, we are so pleased to be joining both CanopyStyle and the Pack4Good initiatives, in order to save the world’s ancient and endangered forests. We look forward to a close collaboration that will allow us to open up a new sourcing stream for packaging and will fuel change in other key operational areas as well, inculcating sustainability initiatives in logistics, infrastructure, energy efficiency, and more,” said Hemant Badri, SVP and head of supply chain at Flipkart. 

The Pack4Good (packaging) initiative now includes more than 235 brand partners, and the CanopyStyle initiative now includes more than 385. Both initiatives represent a significant market shift to address the over 3.2 billion trees that are cut down every year for paper packaging or to make clothing fabrics like viscose and rayon, said a spokesperson for Canopy to Store Brands. Many of the trees used in packaging and fabrics come from vital ecosystems in India, Brazil, Indonesia and Canada.

“India has incredible potential to be a global leader in the production of Next Gen packaging and clothing and this partnership with Flipkart and Myntra turbo charges efforts to scale these climate-saving solutions on a meaningful timeline,” said Nicole Rycroft, executive director at Canopy. “We applaud Flipkart Group’s leadership and look forward to collaborating with them to realize these ambitious goals.”