Shopify Planet is an app developed by Shopify that claims to enable carbon-neutral shipping a any order.

“Planet comes with badges showing that you fund revolutionary carbon removal projects designed to future-proof the planet. Whether you pay for carbon-neutral shipping yourself or enable your shoppers to participate, Planet connects your brand with modern shoppers.”

You can choose to contribute to the offset cost yourself as a business, or give your customers the option (you’ll be charged if they opt out).

Shops that use it get badges to embed in various areas of the site such as product list and product detail pages:

While this sounds nice and fuzzy and is offered by the Big Shop itself — be aware of its current drawbacks:

🌱 Lack of badge customization. What you see is what you get, whether it clashes with your brand, design system, style guide, fonts or template dimensions

🌱 It may play funky with your theme. Like all app blocks, you may have issues with your particular theme, such as creating layout shift, and Shopify may not be willing to support your issue

🌱 You can’t put the badge in your cart drawer. Of course you can design your own message, but it won’t look consistent.

🌱 It’s not clear what it means. “Clarity trumps persuasion” and if this is going to improve conversion, you want a more trustworthy assurance that funds are going to real carbon offset. It’s fuzzy, man.

Shopify Planet is one option for communicating eco-friendly business practice, but you can also create your own internal giveback program and tell it in a more flexible way through your own calls to action, microcopy, badges and policy copy.

There are also organizations like Carbonfact (for fashion and footwear), Bluebird and EcoCert that provide sustainability programs and website widgets that you can use on the site (see examples in the Ideas and tips below)

👟 Nike carries its “Sustainable Materials” attribute label from its product lists to PDPs (where applicable) with colored super-script text for a visual pop:

🛏️ Baloo Living highlights sustainability 3 times within primary PDP real estate — twice in the icon bullets and once in the mini-description

🔮 Aura 8 does similar for its carbon neutral shipping message with color treatment for its icons

Many sites show value propositions near the Cart button for extra trust-building, make one of your “bullets” an eco-friendly message (and a pop of color doesn’t hurt)

🌿 Make sure to punctuate it with a planet-themed icon, or animate it like Cariuma:

💜 AdoreMe includes a Sustainability Impact section to its Product Info with eye-catching icons

🐈 Kittytown Coffee calls out its Carbon Neutral pawlicy

🌿 Versed’s Sustainability tab goes into detail about its partnership with Bluebird Climate and the company’s Sustainability report:

🌿 Vessi and Huppy both feature eco-friendly Qs in their FAQ sections:

I don’t mean the color green, but “green” as in an eco-friendly messaging block.

If you read the FAQ above, you’ve seen how merchants use the Shopify Planet app badge on PDPs, and the downsides of the Planet program.

Other merchants have partnered with Carbonfact, Bluebird or Eco-Cert for their sustainable programs, and others have developed their own green practices and giveback policies.

Regardless of how you do your “greenery,” placing a badge in the Buy Box can bring front-and-center attention to your eco-friendly stance. But make sure to test it, as your PDP real estate may be better used for other content and calls to action. Always be testing!

🎱 Lane-Eight places its Carbonfact data near the Cart button, prioritizing it above product details (this may or may not be a good decision):

💄 Ulta slots its “green badge” below the fold, but above its product description text:

🏀 Nike gives special highlighting to sustainable details of the product description:

🌿 Versed lets customers compare the carbon footprint of its OWN products to communicate the benefit of choosing the more eco-friendly packaging option

Annotating specific products with a sustainable attribute label can help customers quickly identify eco-friendly products. Of course, if your whole catalog is sustainable this will lose effect, and if it blends in too easily with other product detail it will have little impact:

🌿 Nordstrom applies a green highlight to its Sustainable Style badges

🌿 If you use sustainable attribute labels, consider letting shoppers filter by them, either as a stand-alone checkbox or as part of a values-based group of filters:

🌿 Try a sustainably focused in-grid banner, use your imagination ;)

🌿 Or, do like Reformation and include a full banner section below product results in your product list (they also place this block at the bottom of product detail pages).

On desktop, you can see more info on-hover (but they could make it easier to read with higher contrast text-to-background):

See the rollover effect in action:

🌿 Simply add “carbon neutral” to your shipping microcopy across touchpoints like country gates (e.g. Reformation, below), promo bars, cart drawers etc. (as long as it’s true!)

🌿 Diesel adds green leaf icons to its Responsible Products list items to draw the eye and communicate the benefit at-a-glance

🐑 Sheep Inc. includes “carbon-neutral” in its shipping message

🌳 How you design your badge is up to you, and test placement (above or below):

🌳 If you participate in offset programs where customers can choose to contribute, try placing this in the cart drawer (but ALWAYS A/B test as this can introduce more friction and distraction than benefits)

🌿 Steve Madden’s microcopy is not styled to be easy to notice…but it’s there. An emoji could add subtle context and visibility to it:

🌿 Placement also matters. This may or may not be noticed by shoppers. Colored text may be better in this case:

👟 Brooks Running informs you that standard shipping is a more eco-friendly option with a bold CTA section and Earth-themed icon

🌿  Guess suggests local pickup from a UPS access point with “lower carbon-footprint” microcopy (and emoji!)

🌿 Instead of asking at the cart step, which may increase cart abandonment by adding uncertainty to costs and “making them think,” consider trying the “make my order climate positive” opt-in in the Shipping or Billing step

🌿 Aurate offers sustainable packaging as a checkbox option in checkout (using Shopify’s checkout extensibility). While it doesn’t describe what this means, there’s no extra charge, so….