Otto Group
Hamburg
Number of employees
49,895
Industry
Multichannel-retail
Year of foundation
1949
“We don't hand over our responsibility at the cloakroom of the digitalisation. That requires considerable rethinking and the courage to break new ground."
Alexander Birken · Chairman of the Executive Board and Chief Executive Officer, Otto Group
Best Practices
Clothing and textiles bought online are often delivered in plastic shipping bags – because they save space and cause less waste than cardboard boxes. By using plastic waste collected from nature and recycled, these bags should now become more sustainable.
Across the globe, the amount of plastic waste produced is increasing continuously. This poses particular problems in countries that do not have a closed-loop recycling system. In the absence of effective waste management, plastic packaging often ends up discarded in nature. Such "wild plastic” is thus becoming an increasingly serious environmental concern.
Together with the Hamburg-based start-up WILDPLASTIC, the online retailer OTTO is taking action to address the problem: In cooperation with various initiatives in countries without waste management systems, plastic waste is first recovered from nature, and then gathered, pressed together and processed into a fine granulate on site. WILDPLASTIC then ships this granulate to Europe. There it is given a new lease of life: "Wild plastic” is used to make bin liners or shipping bags for online retail, for example for OTTO. This idea was first tested in a pilot project in summer 2020. Then, in March 2021, OTTO began gradually replacing all plastic shipping bags used in its online retail with WILDPLASTIC products.
Find out more:
(links in German only)
