Most plastic in apparel packaging is not there for protection. It is there because it was cheap, it was fast, and nobody re-opened the decision. That makes it easier to remove than people expect — provided the replacement is engineered rather than substituted.
The polybag is the obvious target and the most straightforward. Paper alternatives work well for most garment categories, though they behave differently in humidity and need a different fold. The failure mode we see is brands swapping material without changing the fold, then reporting creasing.
Film windows are the second. A die-cut aperture keeps the reveal and keeps the pack in a single recycling stream. Where a physical barrier is genuinely needed, cellulose film is the usual answer, but it should be specified deliberately rather than assumed.
The third — plastic hangers, clips and loops — is where cost tends to move. Cotton cord and integrated paper locking structures replace them cleanly at moderate volumes.
The test we apply to every substitution is whether protection is unchanged or better. A plastic-free pack that increases damage claims has not reduced anything; it has moved the waste from your packaging line to your returns process.