Free shipping might sound like a great deal, but many people don’t realise the hidden implications behind it. The reality is, someone has to cover that cost—whether it’s you, the seller, or spread across all customers. We display transparent shipping rates via multiple carrier and services to allow you pick and choose based on your delivery preference, so you're never surprised by courier your item is arriving by.
In 2022 FY alone, DREMC customers paid enough in shipping fees to hire at least two full-time workers at minimum wage. For a small business or a small team operation, absorbing these shipping costs is simply not feasible or sustainable.
Big companies or new smaller companies that offer "free shipping" often build those costs into the prices of their products or rely on massive volume to offset the expense. They might even lose money on many items just to gain market share. But for small businesses, this approach isn’t sustainable.
We currently utilise environmentally friendly option, either recyclable or recycled shipping materials for over 95% of our packages that we procure and reuse where possible from our suppliers. In rare cases, such as for bulky items or pallet shipping where no viable alternative exists, we use non recyclable but part recycled plastic film/tape.
We don't use composable options, as these usually require more initial energy to manufacture compared to majority or 100% recycled materials packing. For example materials such as PLA which commonly used as composable options require industrial composer or additional shredding to make them suitable for home composition, can some testing has shown it can take years to compose in residential setting. Also these have relative lower storage life <6 month.