Amazon Packaging FAIL

Why does Amazon insist on using a card board box to ship everything? Today I received a Windows Update Card (i.e., something the size of a credit card that has the license key printed on it) attached to a card board insert inside a much bigger cardboard box.

small plastic card packed in a big box

Why not use an envelope?

In all they used 260 grams of packaging to send a 16g credit card sized object that could just as easily been sent in an envelope.  The difference in impact for my one little package won’t matter much as I’ll recycle the box and packaging, but just thinking about how many small packages Amazon ships out every day, it adds up really fast.

Amazon has a system to give packaging feedback that we wrote about a few years ago and we’ll be doing that next!

I would liked to have gone to a local store to buy it, but the item I wanted was an older version and not available at any of the retailers I checked with near me, so I ordered it online.

 

Happy Greening!
Jon

 Amended 7/8/14: I should also give Amazon credit that they will sometimes ship multiple orders in a single package saving on the embodied energy in shipment and packaging.  I have been pleasantly surprised by this in the past.  To help support our blog, you can start your Amazon Shopping from our affiliate link and we will earn referral fees as a percentage of what you purchase.

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Comments

  1. Ack! So unnecessary. It’s ironic too because I have seen where they try to maximize their warehouse space by organizing inventory by size and no other real indicator. To look at the bright side, at least it’s cardboard and not plastic 😉

  2. I’ve had similar experiences with Amazon, but I’m glad they at least have a way to give feedback. It shows that they do care! Hopefully they continue to make more eco-friendly changes to their system.

  3. I have had the same frustration with not just Amazon sometimes I wonder what the companies are thinking when they package things… it cannot be economical for them to do this.

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