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That's sensible. What isn't is the often vast oversize of Amazon packaging. Like sending one hard drive in a 2cu ft box with lots of packaging. There's now lots

That's sensible. What isn't is the often vast oversize of Amazon packaging. Like sending one hard drive in a 2cu ft box with lots of packaging. There's now lots of scope for the item to move around so the single item inevitably ends up in a corner against the outer box. Amazon never seem to actually bubble wrap anything any more - which has led to damage more than once. Neither the string of air pockets, as in the article, or paper is as effective as they rarely use enough to prevent movement. Here in the UK Amazon seems to have switched solely to paper inner packaging. Environmentally I prefer this.

massysett 10y ago
Amazon ships a huge box, then loads it halfway with paper or air bubbles. Everything shifts around, so it protects nothing in transit. They often ship non-delicate items like clothes in cardboard boxes, where plastic bags would be less wasteful and more protective. Overall, the result of their shipping is that I spend a lot of time deflating plastic, breaking down boxes, and moving lots of garbage to my garage and, subsequently, the curb. Then a truck hauls it some more. All for packaging that ultimately protected paper towels, or that was so loose that the box rattled anyway. It's worse than worthless--it destroys value, takes time, is inconvenient, and hurts the environment, all for no useful result at all. And Amazon does not seem to care. It is so bad that I have shifted purchases offline to Costco in part so I don't have to deal with all this shipping waste. Costco doesn't even give me a bag.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- huac 10y ago
  Amazon owns East Dane/ShopBop, clothing sites which do always use plastic bags. I guess for mainline Amazon they don't care enough about to differentiate what they ship products in.
- Godel_unicode 10y ago
  > And Amazon does not seem to care. This might be of interest to you; send your gently used stuff to Goodwill, in Amazon boxes, for free. https://www.givebackbox.com https://www.givebackbox.com
- function_seven 10y ago
  I recently ordered this decal[1]. It came in this box[2]. If you don’t want to visit the links below, the sticker is 4 inches square, and the box is 7” x 5” x 10”. Why a cardboard mailer wasn’t enough, I don’t know. At least the seven air pouches included with it protected it from high G forces... 1. http://a.co/ew4OGOB http://a.co/ew4OGOB 2. http://imgur.com/qCsvJu7 http://imgur.com/qCsvJu7
- Laforet 10y ago
  Boxes are easier to stack and move especially if you are handling Amazon volumes of goods. Quite often the amount of items that can be carried by a truck or plane is limited by their weight not size, so it may not be as wasteful as it seems.
gumby 10y ago
> Here in the UK Amazon seems to have switched solely to paper inner packaging. Environmentally I prefer this. It's not clear to me you should (perhaps you should, the balance simply isn't clear to me). A plastic air cushion weighs almost nothing, so shipping it to the merchant and then to you uses almost no fuel. It is rarely recycled but instead become sequestered carbon in a landfill. For me, they are convenient to recycle in Palo Alto but this article says, to my surprise, that that's uncommon. I'm not sure of the carbon impact of recycling PE. While paper uses a lot of water and chemicals to make, and involves cutting down trees. It's also very heavy so costly in terms of fuel to transport and recycle. Aesthetically, I agree that paper is much nicer.
- hueving 10y ago
  >and involves cutting down trees Which they plant more of. Using this as an argument against paper is silly because it only applies to unsustainable approaches to paper. If we judged every process by the worst way to do it, then no process would be acceptable.
  - gumby 10y ago
    I'm not sure what your point is here. The whole point of recycling paper is to avoid cutting down trees (and as a minor secondary point reduce landfill, though most paper is compostable). Paper recycling is quite energy and chemical intensive when compared to virgin paper production. If you want to talk about "sustainable" and consider planting trees to be fine, then you don't want to recycle. I don't consider cutting down trees and replanting them that great, frankly. You take a large tree with a large surface area that's transpiring lots of carbon and replace it with a sapling with a small surface area. Yes that sapling is, over time, turning carbon into tree trunk, but that time scale for that is decades while the paper releases carbon immediately through its production and transport and then continues to do so over decades as it decomposes. This calculus can be improved by making the paper out of something with a better yield and shorter growth time (hemp is claimed to be such but I have no idea if that's true) and by using non-fossil fuel. But you have to look at the chemistry required as well...and in any case paper is heavy (a box of paper is basically a box of wood) which is inherently fuel intensive. Plastic film (and plastic toys) are sequestered if you can stick them in landfills. Of course the best carbon sequestration will be to leave the oil in the ground...not yet an option in 2017. But the best lifecycle analysis has to be done on base of most accurate costs possible, not emotion. Paper is pretty shitty.
kalleboo 10y ago
Here in Japan the packaging I see most from Amazon is where they strap the item down with a strong plastic wrap to a thick piece of cardboard that's glued to the bottom of the box. This keeps it centered and they don't need any filler at all.
- ethbro 10y ago
  Curious question: what condition due the boxes typically arrive in? Are punctures and crushed boxes common or rare? It definitely seems like a better method, but I'm curious if the shipping handling is different there. (For reference, in the SE US I'd say about 1:15 Amazon boxes arrives with some kind of damage. 1:40 with worrisome damage)
  - cyberferret 10y ago
    I had to go into the warehouse of a local shipping company the other day to identify and pick up an oversized package, and I couldn't believe how brutal the conveyor systems were. In the few minutes i was there, i saw a couple of boxes fall of a belt, and one particular box caught in a junction of a couple of belts with every other box coming through bashing against it, and no one treating any of these occurrences as a problematic issue. I can see now how a majority of the parcels may get through ok, but the few that end up caught or trapped will end up in very poor condition.
  - kalleboo 10y ago
    I guess it may only be workable in Japan - the delivery companies here are exceptionally good. I've never received a package in anything other than 100% perfect condition. I used to subscribe to a monthly beer club that would send 5 glass bottles of beer though the post office's "5-7℃ chilled delivery" service and they were barely packed at all, no issues. That said I used to often have CDs and DVDs delivered from Amazon.jp to Sweden when I lived there that were packed the same way and they arrived safely, but CDs and DVDs are probably the easiest thing to ship.
  - lucaspiller 10y ago
    I'm in the UK, and basically every package I get has some sort of minor damage. Squashed corners, punched sides, etc. I had a box that looked like somebody had ripped it open the other day. The inner manufacturers box was fine though (it had paper packaging).
mirimir 10y ago
Yes, Amazon seems to have no clue about shipping HDDs. Especially OEM HDDs. They have come loose, in a huge box, in just thin plastic "cases", embedded in air pockets. Which had been pounded flat in transit. New Egg, in contrast, shipped HDDs with molded cardboard padding (as I recall).
- colejohnson66 10y ago
  I've rarely buy from NewEgg, so I don't know how their return policy works, but for Amazon, if I ordered a hard drive and it was DOA, I tell them and they send me a new one before I even ship the first one back. No RMA numbers, no warranty problems, no "it was fine when it shipped, so that's UPS' fault". A simple "defective or doesn't work" and a new one is shipped that day.
  - shiven 10y ago
    This, this and so much this. This is why the majority of my electronics and parts come from Amazon. All other vendors are a morass of justificational cowdung compared to Amazon. Dear vendor: You can take your RMAs, your restocking fees and your lame-ass excuses for shirking responsibility and shove it where the sun don't shine. Because, Amazon.
  - mirimir 10y ago
    Sure, Amazon does make returns effortless. But there are two complications. First, DOA is not really a problem. Second, it seems that Amazon nukes accounts that return too much stuff. Or so I've read. So if you order many HDDs from Amazon, you're faced with many decisions about borderline poor packaging.
    - colejohnson66 10y ago
      Sure their packaging could be better, but in my anecdotal evidence, it's generally enough. I've order dozens of "fragile" items from Amazon, including two hard drives and a graphics card, and none of them were DOA or showed any signs of damage. Regarding them nuking accounts, if you're returning so much that they nuke you, you're probably return an obscene amount.
lucaspiller 10y ago
I'm in the UK, and over the past few months I've received Amazon packages with paper, air cushions and bubble wrap (glass tea pot) - I assume it depends on what you order.
camiller 10y ago
vast oversize? Like this: https://goo.gl/photos/qCcNFNBvp7RmXh1Q6 https://goo.gl/photos/qCcNFNBvp7RmXh1Q6 Sorry for the poor quality. Box is roughly 24" x 18" x 6" containing one approximately 13 inch long kitchen utensil (a silicon whisk) and 7-8 useless air cushions.

massysett 10y ago

Amazon ships a huge box, then loads it halfway with paper or air bubbles. Everything shifts around, so it protects nothing in transit. They often ship non-delicate items like clothes in cardboard boxes, where plastic bags would be less wasteful and more protective. Overall, the result of their shipping is that I spend a lot of time deflating plastic, breaking down boxes, and moving lots of garbage to my garage and, subsequently, the curb. Then a truck hauls it some more. All for packaging that ultimately protected paper towels, or that was so loose that the box rattled anyway. It's worse than worthless--it destroys value, takes time, is inconvenient, and hurts the environment, all for no useful result at all. And Amazon does not seem to care. It is so bad that I have shifted purchases offline to Costco in part so I don't have to deal with all this shipping waste. Costco doesn't even give me a bag.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
huac 10y ago
Amazon owns East Dane/ShopBop, clothing sites which do always use plastic bags. I guess for mainline Amazon they don't care enough about to differentiate what they ship products in.
Godel_unicode 10y ago
> And Amazon does not seem to care. This might be of interest to you; send your gently used stuff to Goodwill, in Amazon boxes, for free. https://www.givebackbox.com https://www.givebackbox.com
function_seven 10y ago
I recently ordered this decal[1]. It came in this box[2]. If you don’t want to visit the links below, the sticker is 4 inches square, and the box is 7” x 5” x 10”. Why a cardboard mailer wasn’t enough, I don’t know. At least the seven air pouches included with it protected it from high G forces... 1. http://a.co/ew4OGOB http://a.co/ew4OGOB 2. http://imgur.com/qCsvJu7 http://imgur.com/qCsvJu7
Laforet 10y ago
Boxes are easier to stack and move especially if you are handling Amazon volumes of goods. Quite often the amount of items that can be carried by a truck or plane is limited by their weight not size, so it may not be as wasteful as it seems.

gumby 10y ago

> Here in the UK Amazon seems to have switched solely to paper inner packaging. Environmentally I prefer this. It's not clear to me you should (perhaps you should, the balance simply isn't clear to me). A plastic air cushion weighs almost nothing, so shipping it to the merchant and then to you uses almost no fuel. It is rarely recycled but instead become sequestered carbon in a landfill. For me, they are convenient to recycle in Palo Alto but this article says, to my surprise, that that's uncommon. I'm not sure of the carbon impact of recycling PE. While paper uses a lot of water and chemicals to make, and involves cutting down trees. It's also very heavy so costly in terms of fuel to transport and recycle. Aesthetically, I agree that paper is much nicer.

hueving 10y ago
>and involves cutting down trees Which they plant more of. Using this as an argument against paper is silly because it only applies to unsustainable approaches to paper. If we judged every process by the worst way to do it, then no process would be acceptable.
- gumby 10y ago
  I'm not sure what your point is here. The whole point of recycling paper is to avoid cutting down trees (and as a minor secondary point reduce landfill, though most paper is compostable). Paper recycling is quite energy and chemical intensive when compared to virgin paper production. If you want to talk about "sustainable" and consider planting trees to be fine, then you don't want to recycle. I don't consider cutting down trees and replanting them that great, frankly. You take a large tree with a large surface area that's transpiring lots of carbon and replace it with a sapling with a small surface area. Yes that sapling is, over time, turning carbon into tree trunk, but that time scale for that is decades while the paper releases carbon immediately through its production and transport and then continues to do so over decades as it decomposes. This calculus can be improved by making the paper out of something with a better yield and shorter growth time (hemp is claimed to be such but I have no idea if that's true) and by using non-fossil fuel. But you have to look at the chemistry required as well...and in any case paper is heavy (a box of paper is basically a box of wood) which is inherently fuel intensive. Plastic film (and plastic toys) are sequestered if you can stick them in landfills. Of course the best carbon sequestration will be to leave the oil in the ground...not yet an option in 2017. But the best lifecycle analysis has to be done on base of most accurate costs possible, not emotion. Paper is pretty shitty.

kalleboo 10y ago

Here in Japan the packaging I see most from Amazon is where they strap the item down with a strong plastic wrap to a thick piece of cardboard that's glued to the bottom of the box. This keeps it centered and they don't need any filler at all.

ethbro 10y ago
Curious question: what condition due the boxes typically arrive in? Are punctures and crushed boxes common or rare? It definitely seems like a better method, but I'm curious if the shipping handling is different there. (For reference, in the SE US I'd say about 1:15 Amazon boxes arrives with some kind of damage. 1:40 with worrisome damage)
- cyberferret 10y ago
  I had to go into the warehouse of a local shipping company the other day to identify and pick up an oversized package, and I couldn't believe how brutal the conveyor systems were. In the few minutes i was there, i saw a couple of boxes fall of a belt, and one particular box caught in a junction of a couple of belts with every other box coming through bashing against it, and no one treating any of these occurrences as a problematic issue. I can see now how a majority of the parcels may get through ok, but the few that end up caught or trapped will end up in very poor condition.
- kalleboo 10y ago
  I guess it may only be workable in Japan - the delivery companies here are exceptionally good. I've never received a package in anything other than 100% perfect condition. I used to subscribe to a monthly beer club that would send 5 glass bottles of beer though the post office's "5-7℃ chilled delivery" service and they were barely packed at all, no issues. That said I used to often have CDs and DVDs delivered from Amazon.jp to Sweden when I lived there that were packed the same way and they arrived safely, but CDs and DVDs are probably the easiest thing to ship.
- lucaspiller 10y ago
  I'm in the UK, and basically every package I get has some sort of minor damage. Squashed corners, punched sides, etc. I had a box that looked like somebody had ripped it open the other day. The inner manufacturers box was fine though (it had paper packaging).

mirimir 10y ago

Yes, Amazon seems to have no clue about shipping HDDs. Especially OEM HDDs. They have come loose, in a huge box, in just thin plastic "cases", embedded in air pockets. Which had been pounded flat in transit. New Egg, in contrast, shipped HDDs with molded cardboard padding (as I recall).

colejohnson66 10y ago
I've rarely buy from NewEgg, so I don't know how their return policy works, but for Amazon, if I ordered a hard drive and it was DOA, I tell them and they send me a new one before I even ship the first one back. No RMA numbers, no warranty problems, no "it was fine when it shipped, so that's UPS' fault". A simple "defective or doesn't work" and a new one is shipped that day.
- shiven 10y ago
  This, this and so much this. This is why the majority of my electronics and parts come from Amazon. All other vendors are a morass of justificational cowdung compared to Amazon. Dear vendor: You can take your RMAs, your restocking fees and your lame-ass excuses for shirking responsibility and shove it where the sun don't shine. Because, Amazon.
- mirimir 10y ago
  Sure, Amazon does make returns effortless. But there are two complications. First, DOA is not really a problem. Second, it seems that Amazon nukes accounts that return too much stuff. Or so I've read. So if you order many HDDs from Amazon, you're faced with many decisions about borderline poor packaging.
  - colejohnson66 10y ago
    Sure their packaging could be better, but in my anecdotal evidence, it's generally enough. I've order dozens of "fragile" items from Amazon, including two hard drives and a graphics card, and none of them were DOA or showed any signs of damage. Regarding them nuking accounts, if you're returning so much that they nuke you, you're probably return an obscene amount.

lucaspiller 10y ago

I'm in the UK, and over the past few months I've received Amazon packages with paper, air cushions and bubble wrap (glass tea pot) - I assume it depends on what you order.

camiller 10y ago

vast oversize? Like this: https://goo.gl/photos/qCcNFNBvp7RmXh1Q6 https://goo.gl/photos/qCcNFNBvp7RmXh1Q6 Sorry for the poor quality. Box is roughly 24" x 18" x 6" containing one approximately 13 inch long kitchen utensil (a silicon whisk) and 7-8 useless air cushions.