Five sustainable Thrive Market practices that are ahead of the curve

Thrive Market, the 9-year-old membership-based e-commerce site that sells natural and organic food, household products, and beauty items, has hit many sustainability milestones:

• It is B Corp certified, meaning the nonprofit network B Lab deemed them as progressing  toward an “inclusive, equitable, and regenerative economy.”
• All three of its fulfillment centers are Zero Waste-certified by Green Business Certification Inc., in recognition of its waste-management and reduction practices.
• It has been carbon-neutral since 2014 and is committed to becoming carbon-negative by 2025.

To reach these milestones and more, some of Thrive Market’s efforts have been bold, obsessive even. Here are five examples.

1. The company avoids Bubble Wrap because it thinks it’s “kryptonite.”

It may be fun to pop, but Bubble Wrap is a big part of what WWD calls the industry’s “plastic problem,” since “retail is littered with plastic: polybags, pallet wraps, films, mailers, hangers, bags, tags and more.”

CEO Nick Green told Retail Brew in 2022 that “Bubble Wrap is…like our kryptonite,” since the online supermarket strives to avoid plastic packaging material.

As an alternative, the company wraps perishable products in a honeycombed die-cut paper called Geami WrapPak.

2. They subjected everything they sell to drop tests.

Rule No. 1 at fulfillment centers is to handle and pack products carefully and—we’re looking at you, butterfingers—not drop anything.

But in late 2022, in Thrive’s Batesville, Indiana, fulfillment center, dropping products was not an accident; it was the point.

Kristin De Simone, associate director of mission at Thrive Market, told Retail Brew that the company is trying to reserve its use of polybags for items that “could explode and just kind of ruin an entire order, which has its own extra environmental impacts.”

And that’s why employees in the Indiana plant conducted drop tests on all of the ~5,500 items that Thrive Market sells. Sometimes, of course, the dropped item required a broom and dustpan, but overall, the inventory proved hearty, and the heretofore use of plastic bags for shipping was deemed unnecessary for many items.

With that audit, “we reduced our plastic bag use by 70% across the board,” De Simone said.

3. They rejigger their packaging to make it more sustainable.

Ever vigilant about reducing its use of plastic, Thrive Market took the unusual step of wrapping its packs of private-label toilet paper (previously labeled “Thrive Market,” now called “Rosey”) in paper. Even the famously green Seventh Generation brand, which Thrive Market also carries, packages toilet paper in plastic.

Thrive Market also packages its branded olive oil in tin containers rather than glass, and its wet beans in pouches rather than tin cans, both because they’re lighter to ship and the packaging itself has a lower carbon footprint, according to the company.

4. They only use ground shipping, never air.

Since it was founded in 2014, the company has not only purchased carbon offsets for all the orders it ships (what it calls “carbon-neutral” shipping) but also only ships via ground transportation, which it estimates uses 84% less CO2 than packages that travel by plane. It estimates that air freight has five times the carbon footprint of ground freight.

“When you ship by air, it’s an order of magnitude more carbon impact…there’s just no comparison,” Green told Retail Brew last year. “We made a decision very early in the business similar to the carbon offsets to say, ‘We will never ship anything [by] air. Period. Full stop.’”

5. They don’t offer free shipping on small orders.

One incentive to purchase an Amazon Prime membership, of course, is there’s no minimum order to get free shipping. However, the downside is that the 6-ounce tube of sunblock you ordered is packaged solo, sometimes in a box with plastic pillows, and the entire burden of the carbon footprint of shipping belongs to that product alone, rather than shared among a full box of other items.

Thrive Market doesn’t offer its members free shipping for tiny orders. For grocery, only orders over $49 qualify for free shipping, or $5.95 shipping if not; for frozen orders, only orders over $120 qualify, or $19.95 shipping if not; for wine, it’s orders over $79, or $13.95 shipping if not.

Why a limit? Thrive Market explains on its website: “Shipping takes a toll on the environment, so that limit encourages you to place an order for several items at once and reduce the carbon footprint and packaging materials involved.”