Flipkart.com recognizes itself as India's leading e-commerce marketplace that does up to 8 million shipments per month. These shipments are done in cardboard boxes further wrapped with water proof plastic packaging. If the item being shipped is fragile, the packaging may also include bubble wrap. It is not uncommon to order an item and find that the volume of packaging is more than that of the very item you ordered.

While cardboard is recyclable, cardboard can only be recycled about 4-8 times as its fibers lose strength with every round of recycling. So while a box may be labeled '100 percent recyclable', a new box can have only 50 percent of recycled fibers and the rest of the cardboard will be made from virgin paper pulp from freshly cut trees. Instead of recycling, simply re-using boxes that are in perfectly good condition can lead to lesser production of these boxes, which means lesser water and energy used and also lesser waste produced.

Here are some measures that could be undertaken to start reusing boxes:

1. Have boxes designed for lesser use of tape and effective reuse
2. Give responsible customers the option of returning the boxes immediately after delivery for reuse.
3. Have customers pay a refundable deposit which will be refunded when the customers return the packaging box.
4. Connect with raddiwalas and provide them with a formal employment, making use of boxes they might collect.
5. Have a system of telling customers how many times a box delivered to them has been reused for the feel good factor.
6. Data about how many trees are being saved by making this switch can be made publicly available to urge other e-commerce giants to make the switch as well.

We the petitioners urge Flipkart to act responsibly and think of effective systems of reusing the packaging that they put out into our cities. As India's leading e-commerce marketplace, Flipkart can set an example to other e-commerce giants on how we can think about the afterlife of our packaging differently.