D’oh! Earth to Online Retailers: Cut The Dumb Over-Packaging BS

Christ on a bicycle, this is some planet killing over-packaging madness. Gizmodo asked readers to submit photos of wasteful shipping from online retailers, and they delivered, providing dozens of images showing a handful of tiny items inside a giant box.

Of course, we could all help cut down on this sort of thing by shopping locally more often, but sometimes there’s a need to order online. Plus, from some retailers’ perspective, the issue is more complicated than just trying to solve it by not padding things as much.

Here’s the thing about shipping out products directly to customers: some items just plain need tons of padding. I once worked for an online retailer that sold very delicate sculptures made of easily breakable materials like glass, and UPS delivery guys and gals are famous for throwing boxes around like they contain pillows. When customers receive a broken shipment they paid thousands of dollars for, they call angrily blaming the retailer for not padding it well enough and demand a replacement immediately. This is wasteful in itself, and results in double the trips on a gas-guzzling UPS truck.

A small fragile item cushioned by biodegradable peanuts in a large recyclable box is one thing. However, the really boneheaded cases of over-packaging are the ones in which the giant box contains a tiny and virtually indestructible product, like Dell with their flash drives. The problem isn’t just the boxes themselves or the materials used to pad the items inside. Gizmodo explains it:

When a company like Dell or Amazon is shipping out thousands of small objects in large boxes every day, it takes up room on UPS and FedEx trucks. Clearly, many more trucks need to be on the road, consuming gas and pumping CO2 into the atmosphere, to get these to where they need to go. If padded mailers or more appropriately sized boxes were used, it would allow for many more to fit in each truck, cutting down on the greenhouse gases emitted every day by shipping companies.

Retailers need to take responsibility for their shipping practices, and they need to do it now. Though most won’t be able to come up with custom-sized boxes for everything they sell (especially if they sell a wide variety of items), they can at least get smaller boxes for items that aren’t likely to break if thrown around a little bit. But retailers aren’t the only ones that can do something to help.

UPS, FedEx and your ilk: is it too much to ask to be a little more gentle with packages? And consumers, you can do your part too: first of all, when you receive packaging like this, complain to the company about it. Second, reuse all of the materials next time you send something out. Finally, if all you need is a single roll of scotch tape that you can pick up at the convenience store one block away, you have no business ordering it online.

Link [Gizmodo]

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