Too much Packaging!

['LIVEWIRE?']

Yesterday I received a package from Amazon in a cardboard box about 6x4x4" with internal padding. The only item in the order was a small tube of heatsink compound which could have been put in a jiffy bag. Why do firms do this? In an earlier thread mention was made of CPC who often do the same sort of thing!

[Station X]

Anything over 25mm thick is a small parcel, which can be up to 45 X 35 X 16cms weigh up to 2kg and cost £2.90 to send. In theory only one size of box could be used for all small parcels.

Amazon have probably rationalised the number of different box sizes they use. If I had to buy packaging rather than use recycled stuff I'd probably do the same thing.

[Lloyd 1985]

I had a similar experience with Ebuyer, bought a load of bits to assemble a PC, there was loads of packaging, but just because there was loads of it didn't mean it was any good! It was a flimsy box full of those awful air-bag things. The problem was that all the actual bits that needed padding were at the edge of the box, and the air bags were in the middle! The only casualty was a stick of RAM, which got loose from it's little plastic ESD safe tray and bounced around in the bottom of the box. It didn't work after that, obviously got static damage since those bags generate loads of it. I did actually manage to load windows onto the machine with that stick of RAM, but it was having trouble when you would start doing things like viewing photo's, as you clicked through them one would not load correctly, being all pixelated, and then if you clicked the next button the system would crash to a blue screen. Replacement RAM fixed it.

Regards,
Lloyd

[dominicbeesley]

This video might be instructive https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQATFbLvIHk the packers don't get a lot of thinking time they just grab the nearest box suitable box.

DigiKey do surprise me though, I often get stuff sent by airmail where size/weight must cost them and the stuff is usually over-packaged in a large box double or tripple bagged in zip-locks then wrapped in their distinctive shredded brown paper wrapping https://twitter.com/mbeckler/status/543600804503248896 (not my cat, but my daughter likes to play with it too!)

[MrBungle]

That is absolutely nothing compared to what I got the other day. My wife ordered a tripod for hairdressers' practice heads. This is about a 3 inch cylinder about 2 feet long and Amazon shipped it in a box that was 3 feet by 3 feet by 2 feet and stuffed with paper. It took the entire recycling box up.

RS are my favourite. If you order a small £3 roll of solder-wick it comes in a massive box with about 30 sheets of printed out hazardous materials data and padding. I don't mind this as the boxes are really good quality and they have the RS print all over them which looks nice

[Dai Corner]

I recently received an SD memory card from Amazon. The card itself was about an inch square, its own packaging about 3" x 4" and Amazon's packaging about a foot square. At least it was flat.

[Reelman]

I’ve always wondered why a range of “standard” boxes has not been produced. Made to be tougher but reusable. The delivery man could collect the “empties” on his next visit just like the milkman. (We must be the only house in the street to still have milk delivered, but I digress) customer made fillers could be used for large runs of the same sized product.
Ok, it would not look as good to receive a second-hand box even if the contents were new but I’m sure it would soon become very socially acceptable......
We put out for recycling every two weeks a wheelie bin sized sack full of cardboard. There must be a “greener” way.

Peter

[Station X]

The simple answer to that is that the packaging manufacturers are in the business of selling boxes. If boxes were recyclable, then they'd sell less boxes and make less profit.

[McMurdo]

There was an 'inside the factory' episode where they were at Amazon. The computer decides what box is to be used for the client's order and the packer has to use that one. Recycled brown paper packing is dispensed as seen fit.
I'd imagine that the whole operation has been time-motion studied to the tiniest degree, and this way is simply the fastest and cheapest.

[Refugee]

I am pretty sure that the shipping companies as in all of those that have come up so far will buy the boxes in sizes that fit through the shipping system at a certain tariff by the truck load.
The packer will select one that is big enough from a pallet of boxes of that size and get on with the job. They will only carry sizes just below each tariff.
The tube of heat sink compound will have to be shipped in a size that will allow a bit of crushing because it will be messy if it were to get damaged.

My packaging ruse is that the package must be able to fly from the back of a large van to land behind the cab. The packaging does look a bit over the top some times but when you consider the way they get loaded onto vans some sense can be made of the amount of packaging.

[emeritus]

It could be a question of ensuring that boxes stack efficiently. I know from a summer job in my youth loading lorries that it's much easier when boxes are all the same size, or at least, all the same height.

[Refugee]

That is true as well if only a few sizes are stocked.

[AC/HL]

Unlike us, they won't be charged per parcel, so however it appears to outsiders it's the overall costs of dispatch that is their only consideration. With a large organisation that will include everything, including a replacement cost factor. Most of the packaging is recyclable or biodegradable, which then includes us in the chain.

[Bazz4CQJ]

I cannot claim to be the Greenest person on the planet, but the recent highlighting of the problem with plastic in the oceans has awoken me from a deep slumber and I am "on the case" bigtime" now; Ocado are learning that

B. Angry

[Craig Sawyers]

I'm there already on the plastic stuff that does not recycle. From a week's shopping for two at Sainsbury's I have filled a plastic bag with non-recyclable plastic. I'm going to take it back to Sainsbury's and give it them back. Each week, every week from now on.

[Refugee]

The only way I know of getting rid of mixed plastic is to mix it with hot tar in order to make the tar go further and then use it to coat road stone and lay it on a road.
It will then get used for another 12 years until the road becomes a teenager when it will get tarmacne and become puck marked with all those grumpy teenage zits that brake car springs this is when there will be a chance to recycle some more plastic.
It cuts the use of tar by about 30% from what they said on a radio program. They have not yet tried in in UK though.

[slidertogrid]

My friend ordered a length of novelty tinsel from amazon last Christmas.
It would have been fine rolled up in a jiffy bag. it arrived in a cardboard box about 6 feet long and about a foot wide. Packed with loads of paper. apert from the ridiculous size of the box the weight of the packaging was many times the weight of the tinsel.
The grey/brown paper once un-scrunched was useful to wrap parcels that I was sending to family over Christmas so it wasn't a total waste.
I assumed that some sort of packaging programme had decided on the box size as surely a person would have had more common sense than that?
I order large bags of dog food from amazon sometimes it is just delivered in the bag with no packaging other times it arrives packed in a large box with the aforementioned scrunched paper.
I do try to reuse boxes and packaging where possible but the excess ends up in the recycle bin which I always feel guilty about. I hate waste!
Rich.

[slidertogrid]

Originally Posted by Craig Sawyers

I'm there already on the plastic stuff that does not recycle. From a week's shopping for two at Sainsbury's I have filled a plastic bag with non-recyclable plastic. I'm going to take it back to Sainsbury's and give it them back. Each week, every week from now on.

That's a dammed good idea, I shall do this myself in future. eventually the supermarkets might take note and do something about the over packing.
One thing that used to annoy me was the people that would have a trolley full of orange plastic bags some with nothing but a container of milk in them. While others took the effort to use reusable bags these people just didn't care
Once the charge came in for bags though this seems to have stopped that's all it took a small charge to change their attitude.
They also seemed to be the people that parked their large expensive cars in the disabled spaces. Which shows the sort of attitude they had towards society...
Rich.

[Bazz4CQJ]

Originally Posted by slidertogrid

I hate waste!Rich.

Well, most especially, waste that ends up around the neck or within the internal organs of some animal!

Re mixed plastics in hot tar; good. Wonder if you could get mixed plastics to go into fuel oil (heating, or even the evil slime used in big marine diesels)? Perhaps so, especially if the plastic was formulated to do that when it was made for its original use as packaging ?

B

[Refugee]

I have got a plastic removal crate that fits into a supermarket trolley.
It lives in the car boot and comes out at the supermarket and also stops anything else I carry from rolling about while I am driving.