Honeycomb paper mailers vs plastic bubble mailers: an honest comparison

Choose honeycomb paper mailers for books, clothing, boxed cosmetics, accessories and other non-glass items, especially if your customers care about plastic. Choose a plastic bubble mailer when the product must stay dry on wet delivery routes, or when it is tiny and light and the parcel weight matters more than anything else. For glass and anything that cracks, neither is right. Use a box.

That is my verdict. Here is the reasoning behind it, including where paper loses.

Jagannath Polymers has made packaging in Jaipur since 1997, both plastic and paper. So I have no quarrel with plastic.

On this site we sell the paper side: honeycomb paper rolls and honeycomb padded mailers in six sizes. Read me as a maker who will still tell you when plastic is the better tool.

How do they protect differently?

A bubble mailer cushions with air. Small sealed bubbles squash under a knock and spring back. They are very good at soaking up small, sharp knocks on light items.

A honeycomb mailer cushions with paper cells. The cells bend under a knock, and the paper layer adds some stiffness, so the mailer resists bending a little better. For a book, a print or a boxed product with corners that must not crush, that stiffness helps.

Neither one is a box.

A heavy drop on a corner can reach the product through either.

Side by side

Can bubble mailers be recycled?

This is where the two really part ways.

Many bubble mailers are a paper outside bonded to a plastic bubble lining. Two materials stuck together are hard for any mill to separate. The North London Waste Authority, a public waste body in the UK, says on its own guidance page for bubble wrap envelopes that envelopes padded with bubble wrap cannot be recycled, and asks people to reuse them if they can.

All-plastic bubble mailers are a different case. They are a single material and some film collection schemes take them, but kerbside collection of plastic film is still patchy in many countries.

A honeycomb mailer that is paper outside and paper inside goes with paper wherever paper is collected. Do check two details before you print "100% recyclable" on your website: the release liner on the seal strip, and any plastic label or window. Our note on what you can honestly tell customers about recycling honeycomb paper covers the wording.

What drives the cost?

I will not compare prices. They move with paper and polymer markets every month, and they depend on size and quantity. What I can do is list what actually moves your cost per order.

1. The mailer itself, at your size and quantity.
2. Postage. If one mailer pushes a parcel into a higher weight or size band, that can matter more than the mailer price.
3. Damage. One broken or bent product costs a refund, a replacement, and often a review. Bad protection is the most expensive packaging there is.
4. Tax. In the UK, HMRC's Plastic Packaging Tax guidance (updated 12 February 2026) says the tax is due on plastic packaging components that contain less than 30% recycled plastic, and that businesses making or importing 10 tonnes or more of plastic packaging in 12 months may need to register. If you import plastic mailers into the UK, check where you stand. Our note on the UK Plastic Packaging Tax goes further.
5. Storage. Both arrive flat, so this is usually a tie.

Where paper loses

The rain. A paper mailer left on a wet doorstep for an afternoon will soften. If your couriers leave parcels outside in monsoon or British winter weather, and your product cannot take a little damp, test this before you switch.

The second loss is weight. For very light items posted in big volumes, the few extra grams of paper padding can occasionally tip a parcel into the next band. Weigh both before you decide.

I would rather you know these two now than find them in your complaint inbox.

A side-by-side test before you switch

We drop-test samples at our plant as part of our quality checks, but your product and your couriers are the real test. Here is the version I would run.

1. Take 10 of each mailer in the same size, with your most common product inside.
2. Drop each one from waist height onto a hard floor, flat once and on a corner once.
3. Spray one of each with water for 30 seconds, leave it for an hour, and open it.
4. Weigh one of each, packed, on your postal scale.
5. Send five of each to friends or staff at home and ask them for one line of feedback on the unboxing.

Then look at your last three months of returns.

If damage claims are rare on your current mailer and your products are dry goods, switching to paper is a low-risk change.

If you are choosing a size, our guide to honeycomb padded mailer sizes has the chart, and our products page lists the mailers with our rolls.

Send us your product and your monthly volume on the contact page, and we will send honeycomb mailers in two sizes for your test. Put a bubble mailer next to them and let your own drop test decide.