Sustainable Shopify Store: Planet App, Packaging, Delivery

A sustainable Shopify store starts with shipping, the part of your footprint Shopify gives you tools for. Shopify’s Planet app makes shipments carbon neutral by funding companies that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it, either for all your shipments or for customers who choose to pay $0.50 at checkout. The rest is in your settings and your product pages: packages that fit, delivery options that avoid needless shipping, and products that last.

Shopify facts come from the Help Center pages on Planet, packages and delivery methods, read on October 23, 2026.

Carbon-neutral shipping with Planet

Planet has two subscription options:

1. You pay to make all shipments carbon neutral. Every order ships carbon neutral and the cost is yours.
2. Customers opt in. At checkout, customers can choose to pay $0.50 USD for carbon-neutral shipping on their order.

Setting it up:

1. Install the Planet app from the Shopify App Store and choose your plan. You can change it later.
2. Add the Planet badge to your online store. It has a marketing mode that shows your climate impact and an engagement mode that lets customers contribute.
3. If you chose the opt-in plan, add the Planet checkout extension so customers see the choice at checkout.
4. Check the analytics: the number of carbon-neutral shipments and the amount of carbon removed.

Shopify’s Help Center also explains how Planet calculates your shipping emissions. That calculation is the number to quote, rather than a guess of your own.

Which plan to pick is a business decision. Paying for all shipments makes a simple, consistent statement on every order. The opt-in plan costs you nothing per order but only covers customers who check the box, so the badge should say exactly that.

Packaging and shipping settings that cut waste

• Add your real packages under Settings > Shipping and delivery > Packages, with outside dimensions and weight. A box that fits the product uses less material and, with carrier-calculated rates, often costs less to ship.
• Assign packages to products that ship alone in a specific box, so labels and rates use the right size. For multi-item orders the store default package is used.
• Set a sensible default package. It decides the rate for products without their own package, so a default that is too big inflates every weight-based rate.
• Offer local pickup if you have a shop or warehouse, so nearby customers can collect instead of having a parcel sent. Our guide to local pickup on Shopify covers the setup.
• Offer local delivery if you deliver yourself in your area.
• Ship orders together. Where customers order several items, fulfill them in one shipment rather than as each item arrives, if your timelines allow.

Shipping settings in depth are in the shipping and returns hub.

Products that last longer

Returns and short-lived products add shipments too. On the product page:

• Care instructions on every product that needs them, so items last longer. Store them as a metafield shown on all product pages, rather than in one paragraph per product.
• Repair and spare parts: if you sell replacement parts, link them from the product.
• Accurate sizing and dimensions, which cut returns, and each return is another shipment.
• Honest descriptions of materials: “100% recycled polyester outer” is checkable; “eco-friendly” is not.

Sidekick can draft care guides and product descriptions from your notes; check every claim before publishing, since you are responsible for what the store says.

Say it without greenwashing

If you sell to consumers in the EU, Directive (EU) 2024/825 has applied since September 27, 2026. Among other things it bans generic environmental claims such as “eco-friendly” without proof, and claims that a product or service has a neutral or reduced climate impact based on offsetting emissions. Planet funds carbon removal for your shipments, so check with a legal adviser before using “carbon-neutral shipping” wording for EU customers; describing what you fund (“we fund carbon removal for the shipping of every order”) is the safer form. Our guide to sustainable supply chains explains what that means for product claims.

What you can say with Planet is specific: which shipments were made carbon neutral (all of them, or those where the customer opted in) and the amount of carbon removal funded, as shown in the app’s analytics. State it in those words and avoid calling the whole store or product “carbon neutral” when only the shipping is covered. Our other operations topics are collected in the running a store hub.

Frequently asked questions

What is Shopify Planet? Planet is a Shopify app that makes shipments carbon neutral by funding companies that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it. It adds a badge for your store, an optional checkout choice for customers, and analytics on the carbon removed.

How much does carbon-neutral shipping cost on Shopify? With Planet’s customer opt-in plan, customers who choose carbon-neutral shipping pay $0.50 USD at checkout, according to Shopify’s Help Center on October 23, 2026. With the other plan you pay to make all shipments carbon neutral; check the current price in the app when you choose the plan.

Can I call my Shopify store carbon neutral if I use Planet? Planet covers the shipping of your orders, not your products or your business as a whole. Describe exactly what you fund, keep claims within what the app’s analytics show, and for EU customers check the 2024/825 rules on offset-based neutrality claims before using “carbon neutral” at all.