Everything about ordering from Orbit.

Inside our pilot city's delivery zone — a dense core roughly 3–5 miles across — every order goes out by cargo e-bike. Addresses just outside that zone are covered by electric van on suburban routes.

Anywhere further out, we bridge to a certified carbon-neutral shipping option from an existing carrier rather than pretending we can cover the whole country on bikes. That's a deliberate choice: owning 100% of delivery from day one is how small operations burn their capital.

Typically 2–3 days inside the e-bike zone, and 3–5 days when an order bridges to a carrier. We're not competing on same-day — matching that would mean more vehicles, more trips, and a worse footprint per parcel, which defeats the point.

Free by cargo e-bike on orders over $35 inside the zone, $3.50 below that. Carrier-bridged orders are a flat $6.50. Delivery cost per order is one of the core numbers we track to know whether this model actually works, so we price it honestly rather than burying it in product prices.

We're deliberately not naming it until Phase 0 is finished — the choice depends on customer interviews and delivery-density checks that are still underway. The roadmap explains how that decision gets made and what has to be true before we commit.

Yes, for anything we pack: recycled cardboard boxes, mushroom- or cornstarch-based mailers, and paper tape. Void-fill is shredded paper or mycelium, never bubble wrap.

The honest caveat is inbound packaging. Some suppliers still ship to us in plastic. We raise it during vetting and prefer suppliers who've solved it, but we're not going to claim a perfect chain we don't yet control end to end.

Mostly. Paper tape and kraft materials compost or recycle with paper. Cornstarch mailers are certified compostable, though some municipal programs are picky about certified liners — check locally. Or hand it back to your courier and let us deal with it.

From three inputs: packaging production for the order, the delivery mode you pick, and the total weight being moved. We compare that against a typical gas-van last mile to produce the "X% less" figure.

These are estimates from published emissions factors, not measured telemetry from a sensor on the bike. We keep the model conservative on purpose — an inflated number is worse than a modest, defensible one, especially with customers who actually check.

Yes. It's shown as its own line item in the cart with a checkbox, not folded invisibly into the price. Uncheck it and your order still goes out by e-bike or carbon-neutral carrier — the offset covers the remaining estimated footprint, it isn't what makes the delivery low-carbon in the first place.

To a verified offset registry rather than a self-certified scheme of our own. We treat offsets as the last step after reducing the footprint by design — routing, mode choice, and lighter packaging do more real work than buying credits, and we'd rather lead with the reduction.

Leave your packaging — or a product that's reached end of life — out on your next delivery, and the courier collects it on the run they're already making. No separate pickup trip, because a dedicated van collecting packaging would undo the savings it's meant to protect.

Unused items go back within 30 days, collected on a scheduled delivery run in-zone. Returns are one of the least sustainable parts of e-commerce, so we'd rather help you choose correctly the first time — that's why product pages carry materials, origin, and end-of-life detail instead of just a photo and a price.

Because vetting is real work, and a curated catalog is the only kind you can vet honestly at this size. Each SKU is checked for materials, manufacturing footprint, supplier packaging, and certifications before it's listed.

The plan is 50–200 SKUs at full Phase 1 launch, with a second category in Phase 2 — see the roadmap.

Documentation over marketing language. We ask for material sourcing and manufacturing details, look for relevant third-party certifications (B Corp, Fair Trade, FSC, GOTS, BPI), and ask what the supplier's own shipping packaging looks like. Vague "eco-friendly" claims with nothing behind them don't clear the bar, and suppliers get spot-checked after listing.

Because compostable packaging costs more than plastic, and low-volume e-bike delivery costs more per parcel than a diesel van doing 200 stops. We'd rather charge honestly for that than cut corners on the commitments that are the entire point. As volume grows, packaging and delivery costs per order come down — that's exactly what the pilot is designed to test.

Not yet. Opening the platform to third-party sustainable brands is a Phase 3 item, and every seller will go through the same vetting checklist products do. Until the delivery loop is proven, adding marketplace complexity would just obscure whether the core model works.