Want to find some ways to package your items for FREE? Well you’re in the right place.
I’m sure everyone is looking for a way to be more eco-friendly and save some pennies, whether you’re a small business owner or not.
It’s a known fact that packaging items can start to add up, even if you aren’t a small business and are just posting gifts to family and friends. Postage itself will never be free but the packaging you package your items in can be!
How?
Believe it or not, packaging is probably glaring you right in the face. That egg box you emptied this morning after your fried egg sarnie or the newspaper you just put in the recycling bin. Everyday items can easily be recycled and used as they are or creatively cut to make protective packaging.
Here are 10 things you can use that you may not have even thought of and they don’t even cost a thing:
- Cat Food Boxes – Fife Sea Glass uses these as they are super strong and fit the large frames she sells in her small biz
- Egg boxes – These are great to use around an item/s to protect it
- Magazines – Create-England scrunches up magazine pages to fill gaps in boxes to protect items
- Twine from the garden – Crafty Bijoux often gets given twine for her garden and uses excess amount to wrap handmade items
- Packaging from packages you already receive – Copper Cup does this and so does Reconsidered Retro!
- Thick cardboard from boxes – Let It Bloom Art cuts and uses as a backing for envelopes to protect their cards and prints from bending
- Padded sheets in Gousto and Hello Fresh boxes – The Urban Vintage Affair reuses these and the sheets even encourage you to reuse them!
- Newspapers – Mr Hanger Man recycles newspapers to cut into strips for packaging
- Dog food sacks – Molle Collection recycles dog food sacks to use for the outer packaging
- Spare fabric offcuts – Samm Designs uses these to tie and secure her wrapped items
It’s great to see so many of you being really creative with your packaging and inspiring others to do the same. I’m sure if you wandered round the house you could pick out plenty of things that could eventually be used as part of your packaging supplies!
If you’ve got an unusual item you recycle to use as packaging then drop me a DM on Twitter – I’d love to hear and I’m sure your fellow small businesses would too.
