Our Current Stories on Sustaining the Environment

Packaging and Product Innovations

New Bags & Boxes Save Tons of Waste

When Nordstrom initiatives to conserve natural resources marry up with our ability to better serve our customers' shopping preferences, it's a win-win. Our new packaging and bags is one such example.

We recently made changes to our packaging and bags, and our customers will see these new items as stores use up their current inventories of the older packaging.

Function and fashion

The Nordstrom design team was challenged to create environmentally-friendly bags and boxes that are convenient for customers and easy for our salespeople to assemble. In addition, the materials had to be easy to procure, assemble and ship—all while reducing material usage and waste.

Pia Hunter, Nordstrom Marketing Creative Director, explained that short and medium bags are now slightly shorter. "This saves materials by eliminating unused carrying space and now the handles are longer to be more comfortable."

Pia also explained that larger bags have increased in width and height to better fit tall boots and be less prone to tearing. Customers will also find that the Nordstrom logo now has a "vertical spin" like our catalogs.

The gift boxes are now the same silver as our shopping bags, with a "debossed" Nordstrom vertical logo. Five of our boxes are now one-piece instead of two pieces with a box bottom and top. Our highest use boxes, such as the shirt box, were moved to one-piece to reduce material consumption and assembly time, and the boxes and bands are now numbered so that matching boxes to bands is easier than ever. We also adjusted our ribbon for a visually appealing, tighter bow.

"These changes to our packaging created a material savings of 459 tons of paper and 1.2 millions yards of ribbon," Pia said.

Gift card packaging and garment bags

We also redesigned our gift card packaging so that it's now a folder with an attached ribbon that can be shipped in a padded envelope. By eliminating gift card envelopes and boxes, we anticipate saving 33.22 tons of material.

Additionally, to replace our current plastic garment bags, we're moving to a non-woven acid free bag, which will also be silver to match our updated bags and boxes. Our new garment bags are reusable, breathable and water-resistant.

"Over the last ten years, many of the changes we've made to our bags and boxes have been made to improve our ability to reduce environmental impacts wherever possible. These new designs continue that tradition and have once again improved on our efforts," said Pia.