Planet Is a Must-Have App for Brands Committed to Sustainability

Planet is a new app from Shopify that lets brands offer carbon-neutral shipping for every order.

There’s no question that brands want to be more sustainable. In fact, 48% of small businesses powered by Shopify engage in at least one environmentally sustainable business practice, while another 40% are interested in engaging for the first time.

One of the most impactful changes that a business owner can make is to their shipping, something that accounts for nearly 3% of global carbon emissions. Thanks to Planet, a new app from Shopify, Shopify-powered businesses can now offer carbon-neutral shipping on every single order. Merchants can choose from the following options:

• Let customers add $0.25 before checkout
• Pay between $0.035 and $0.15 per order
• Do both: Give customers a chance to fund carbon removal and allocate  $0.035 and $0.15 per order for carbon-neutral shipping

“It’s a couple of pennies an order,” says Rennie Wood, owner of Ontario-based toy business Wood Wood Toys, which recently began using the app. “It’s a very, very small price to pay, and the cost in lives and livelihood could be huge.”

And for Rennie’s customers, it’s another reason to choose Wood Wood Toys.

“My sense is that it adds one more dimension to the customer’s purchasing decision,” he says.

Why Planet?

The Planet app is the simplest, most effective way for Shopify’s millions of merchants to offer carbon-neutral shipping and support the technologies necessary for future-proofing the planet.

Unlike other sustainable commerce services, Planet focuses on carbon removal, rather than offsetting carbon with forest protection. To do this, Shopify works with high-impact companies like Heirloom.

 

“Planet empowers Shopify merchants to join the fight against climate change in such a meaningful way,” says Stacy Kauk, Shopify’s Head of Sustainability. 

“We know that customers have never cared more about how their purchases impact the environment. With Planet, Shopify businesses can use carbon-neutral shipping to connect with customers while supporting the most innovative climate solutions on Earth.”

How to use Planet

Installing Planet is easy. Navigate to Planet in the Shopify app store to install in a few clicks. 

From there, you’ll choose who pays for carbon-neutral shipping. To ensure that 100% of your brand's deliveries are carbon neutral, you should select the "Pioneer" Plan. The three options are Decade, Century, and Millennium. Each offers a different level of carbon removal, and the fee ranges from 3.5¢ to 15¢ per order.

“It took maybe a half a second of consideration before we chose the full 1,000-year plan,” Rennie says.

 

Wood Wood Toys

Sustainability is built into the ethos of Rennie’s company. Wooden toys, which he also sells refurbished, can last generations. He even used to hand deliver orders on his bike.

“Minimizing our environmental footprint is about sustaining and hopefully improving a world that will one day be inherited by our own kids and nieces and nephews, and children all around the world,” he says.

The more you use Planet, the more of an impact you’ll see. Your shop’s dashboard will tell you exactly how much carbon your orders have removed.

Show customers your commitment to climate action

According to Shopify research, 44% of customers chose to buy from brands that have a clear commitment to sustainability.

Planet makes it easy to communicate your commitment to sustainability directly to customers. Installing the app gives you access to a storefront badge, as well as another badge at checkout that lets shoppers know that their order shipment will be carbon neutral.

This was top of mind for Nicholas Stricker, owner of Wild Wein. Based in the German countryside, Stricker sells natural wines, which means heavy shipments. He says that natural wine customers already tend to be environmentally conscious and had been asking him about sustainable shipping practices. When he looked into it using his regular shipping partner, he found it too complicated to set up on his own.

“That’s the thing that I’ve been looking for and that’s why I was really happy and immediately installed Planet when I could,” Nicholas says.

“That was the big elephant in the room for me when it came to our impact on the environment.”

As a small business owner, Nicholas says Planet cut out the difficulty of arranging carbon-neutral shipping on his own, and he’s even planning to tell his customers about the app’s abilities in an email newsletter.

Rennie also says carbon neutral shipping matters to his customers. Like Nicholas, his products can be heavy, and Planet lets customers know the shipping costs are worth it.

Planet shows your commitment to sustainable commerce, and that’s a win for brands, for customers, and for our Earth.