The future of retail is hybrid and sustainable. Here’s how I learned that firsthand.

By Hassan H. Rmaile

Vice President and General Manager, Label and Graphics Materials (LGM),  EMENA at Avery Dennison

Like many people, I’ve found that COVID-19 has made a big difference in my own shopping habits.

I had always been a “touch and feel” shopper—the kind who prefers to hold and examine even the most ordinary item before buying it.

When the pandemic hit in March 2020, I lasted about seven days before strapping on my mask and venturing out to Walmart in Atlanta to do some grocery shopping in person. 

What I found was not the easy in-and-out shopping experience I’d almost always had in the past. Now there were very long lines, empty shelves, security guards, and anxious store employees and customers all equally on edge.

I knew then that it was time to give e-commerce a chance. To learn how to do it right, I turned to the smartest e-commerce experts I knew: My kids, who had just about every online shopping app there is.

“What would you like to buy?” my middle one asked.

I always enjoyed drinking unsweetened peach iced tea, which made a lot of sense, living in the “Peach State,” and I was almost out of it. So I figured that would be a good test case. 

With a blur of thumb clicks, an order was placed.

The next morning, a fresh canister of my favorite unsweetened peach iced tea mix was waiting for me. No driving to the store. No searching the aisles. Virtually no time spent on the transaction at all.  And almost-instant delivery!  Finally, I was seeing e-commerce’s appeal.

Fast forward a few months to when I moved back to The Netherlands. I had a nice house, but nothing in it. (Well, that’s not entirely true. I had a mattress I’d borrowed from my uncle.)

With stores completely closed because of the lockdown and a curfew in place, there was only one way for me to get the things I needed. So I went online and bought all of it—including a washer and dryer, which felt like a much bigger deal than ordering iced tea. (The irony of me preaching innovation and disruption but then being anxious about buying an appliance online was not lost on me. Old habits die hard. But it all turned out fine.) 

Today, I do 50 percent of my shopping online. Before the pandemic, I did zero. So it has been quite an adaptation. And I’m not alone. In the UK, to cite just one market, online retail sales grew 36% year-over-year, the highest annual growth since 2007. According to eMarketer and Coresight Research, online grocery delivery alone is expected to exceed $100 billion in sales for the first time this year, and more than 60% of shoppers plan to continue buying groceries online once the pandemic is over. (That’s one place where I can’t shake my old habit— I still prefer buying my groceries in person.) 

All of this welcome convenience currently comes with environmental impact.

Soon after I began shopping online, I noticed my trash and recycling bins were filling much more quickly, thanks to all the packaging now coming into my home.  And it wasn’t just packaging from retailers—it was restaurants, too. A burger place once packed my order like it was a set of Russian nesting dolls. Several containers in, I finally found my coleslaw.

The fact is, e-commerce is exploding at a time when society cares more than ever about sustainability. According to research by the firms PFS and Live Area, consumers expect retailers to offer sustainable packaging. Seventy-three percent of people want online retailers to use recyclable packaging and 74% expect them to minimize their use of packaging altogether. 

This pull from consumers is necessary. Without it, some companies won’t invest the resources necessary to move the needle on sustainability. And even when companies who prioritize sustainability commit to eliminating waste, they don’t get far if they can’t engage consumers in the process. A recyclable bottle can’t put itself in a recycling bin. 

But many consumers are indeed passionate about sustainability. I saw this for myself when, as a bit of informal primary consumer research, and also to satisfy my own curiosity,  I chatted with several people at a local Albert Heijn supermarket one summer afternoon who were using the store’s machines for returning plastic bottles. The machines give users a voucher for store credit or cash for every bottle returned. As I spoke to people using the machines—I took my uncle with me to help with my Dutch—their commitment to reducing their environmental impact was palpable. And they all expressed a desire for more sustainable packaging. 

At Avery Dennison, we’re helping converters and brands meet the challenge of serving more consumers via e-commerce while employing packaging that is less wasteful and easier on the earth. 

Our Sustainable ADvantage portfolio features label materials that enable package recycling, reuse, or composting, use less material, contain recycled or renewable content, and are responsibly sourced. 

Our intelligent label solutions, meanwhile, are creating new possibilities for packaging by combining conventional label materials with digital technology. Intelligent labels help improve efficiency and eliminate waste by dramatically expanding supply chain visibility. They can also help brands communicate with consumers far beyond the limits of a conventional label and instruct them in how to recycle a product once it’s at the end of its useful life. 

We are also engaged in several partnerships to develop solutions that could transform the way brands approach prime packaging. Early results of these projects have been promising, and we hope to share more details in the near future.

And of course, the challenges created by the rise in e-commerce involve more than just packaging waste. The attendant increase in carbon emissions must also be addressed. One estimate predicts that emissions from deliveries will jump 32 percent by 2030. 

Beyond environmental sustainability, other supply chain challenges abound. There seems to be a news story every day about stressed supply networks resulting in empty shelves and product delays in one industry or another. And as retailers adjust to the new demand for e-commerce, omnichannel solutions that better align inventories in physical stores, distribution centers, and on online sites are in high demand. 

We offer solutions for all those challenges, with more on the way. 

For a deep dive into these issues, I encourage you to read Regenerative Retail Economy, a report we recently produced with The Future Laboratory as part of our “ReThink Retail” campaign. It’s 22 concise pages of useful insights into where retail is today, what’s driving meaningful change in the sector, and what to look out for in the future. The report covers consumers’ move to e-commerce, the balancing act between sustainability and convenience, and much more.

Here at Avery Dennison’s Labels and Packaging Materials division serving Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa, we recently developed a new vision statement that sums up what we think is the right approach in this new pandemic-shaped landscape:

Our vision is to enrich packaging to deeply connect consumers and brands through responsible physical and digital solutions.

Connected consumers. Responsible solutions. Digital identities. I’ll raise a cold glass of unsweetened peach iced tea to that.