E-commerce has been known to many people especially the people living in the United States of America. Ebay and Amazon were some of the top e-commerce companies back then. There were also some popular brands who offer online shopping on their websites.
When I was in high school, one of my favorite e-commerce website was Delias. Are you familiar with that site? Delias had a lot to offer from accessories, Paul Frank items up to home decorations and beddings. I was already familiar with "add to cart" even before because of this site. Sad to say that they didn't have any shipping to the Philippines. I was suppose to put in our relatives' home address but my godmother told me that she and my cousin will just be the ones to buy or look for the items that I like in Target, Walmart or Marshalls. I just have to send a photo of the things that I wanted and they would be the one to send it through balikbayan boxes.
Shopee and Lazada are the popular app-based e-commerce platforms here in the Philippines. I don't know the exact year that it was launched here in the Philippines but it was in 2017 when I first started to browse through their application. Before Shopee and Lazada, the popular e-commerce here in the Philippines was Sulit and also Multiply, a social networking service alongside Friendster and Myspace that later turned into an e-commerce website. Anyone familiar with Multiply? I loved that site because it was sort of like Blogspot or Blogger but is more user friendly and you get to file all your pictures in different albums and blog about it. When Multiply became an e-commerce website, I didn't bother checking it again. It is just so sad because I have uploaded a lot of pictures on Multiply.
Sulit became OLX and was later acquired by Carousell, a platform for buying and selling brand new and secondhand items. I have been a Carousell user since 2017 and I was able to know Shopee because I was looking for some platforms where I can sell some of our secondhand items. You heard that right, secondhand items. I was able to sell a lot of our stuffs through that platform. You can just imagine how many stuffs we have and I'm still not yet done with our general cleaning. Although this time we can't have a garage sale nor can I upload it on Carousell because this things are not important right now. Who would use a bag or a necklace during these times right? So when I browsed through Shopee before, I saw the most sellers were from overseas but I did find a lot of affordable and new stuffs. Because it was overseas, I wasn't that interested so I sticked with Carousell.
When Shopee has been introduced in the Philippines with the use of celebrity endorsers and advertisements, that was the only time I created an account. Even before pandemic, there are already a lot of us who are more into online shopping. Now that it is scarier to go out, there has been an increase on e-commerce platforms. I know that it is more convenient to all of us but I am just worried with the increasing number of plastics that is being consumed by it. Some items had to be wrapped and secured with a bubble wrap so as not to damage the items. Again, another plastic consumption. Does anyone here have also though about that? How can we take part in the battle against plastic and be part of the solution and not in pollution during this pandemic?
I love online shopping even before the pandemic because it is more convenient and you can really find items at an affordable price compared in buying from the shopping malls. But of course there are also its pros and cons but let's admit it that it is really helpful especially during this tough times. We do not know when all of this COVID thing will be over but I just hope that there will be an alternative for the plastic bags.
I haven't tried doing groceries online so I have no idea how they packed all their orders. Years ago, Honest Bee, an online grocery delivery service puts their orders in a big eco bag. My sister-in-law and my closest friend (who is also my sister-in-law's sister), used to order from them and had collected a lot of eco bags. It is just so sad that they have stopped operations even before the pandemic started. It was such a great company as it has helped a lot of people who doesn't have time to do groceries physically. They even think about our environment by using eco bags.
In our household, we use the plastic bags that we collect from online shopping as a garbage bag. For the bubble wraps, we keep and we reuse it again. Saves us the money and we somehow helped in saving the environment. We should all learn how to reuce it or dispose these plastic bags properly. Imagine how many orders each courier services deliver in a day and how many of it will end up in our ocean? We all don't want that to happen. The next time you would order from those e-commerce platforms and/or if you are waiting for your order/s, I hope you know what to do with those plastic bags and bubble wraps. Let us not forget to save Mother Earth even during this pandemic.
goood