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The offset in reduced plastic use by consumers will be more than compensated with the rapidly growing e-commerce market. I am terrified of the amount of plasti

The offset in reduced plastic use by consumers will be more than compensated with the rapidly growing e-commerce market. I am terrified of the amount of plastic my Amazon purchases bring with their packing. It is a step in the right direction, but the govt. should invest and provide alternatives, perhaps use existing research institutions to come up with new, eco-friendly packing materials, and popularize them.

icebraining 8y ago
I don't buy from Amazon, but weren't they pushing for minimal and plastic-free packaging? Has the program been dropped?
- kumarvvr 8y ago
  Is it so? I haven't heard of it. I recently ordered a set of knives and they came wrapped in a plastic cover (black) and wrapped with a cardboard box. But the knives themselves are packed in plastic and cardboard boxes. If I'd gone to a store, I could have picked them up by hand and avoided the plastic covering required for transport. E-commerce generates additional non-biodegradable waste and that is a problem that has to be solved considering the rapid rise of online shopping.
  - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
    At the store just the other day - shopkeeper ringing up the guy in front of me asked "Do you want a bag for that?" It was a product, in a box, wrapped in plastic. And the guy had his own canvas bag out already. If he'd accepted, he'd have had the product in a box in a bag in a bag. My god. When does it all end? What was the product? Plastic bags.
    - paulie_a 8y ago
      It's getting annoying when I go to a store. Put my backpack on the counter and get asked about a bag for the two small items I am buying.
  - efields 8y ago
    Don't you think the store vendor just went through the trouble of unwrapping and disposing of the packaging you're describing? I just went through a weekend guilt trip over the baby furniture we bought. Crib and dresser. Wasn't inexpensive, and "built from sustainable forests." 2 pieces of furniture, 5 garbage bags of styrofoam. My alternatives would have been Ikea — more driving, assembly, and time consumed on my end, worse quality — or even higher end American-made products that would have cost 2-5x, where they'd be shipped freight, assembled, and white gloved into my house.
- bunderbunder 8y ago
  I do, and, apparently, coming from Amazon, "minimal and plastic-free" means that, if I order a single item, it will come in retail packaging (plastic tray to immobilize and cushion, inside a cardboard box that is at least 6 times the size of the product - hence the need for that plastic tray - inside shrinkwrap), and then that item will be placed inside another cardboard box that is at least 6 times the volume of the retail packaging for the item I ordered, so, in order to cushion it, I need a huge pile of those plastic air pillows. It's a pretty huge amount of packaging and cushioning, about the amount you'd need if your package will be handled by drug-crazed chimpanzees (or USPS). But then it just gets loaded into the back seat of the car of whatever gig economy person does the Amazon deliveries in my neighborhood that day. I don't know what Amazon thinks these people are doing to necessitate that volume of packaging, or why they're continuing to employ them given that they think that is the case. tl;dr, if they really were pushing for minimal packaging, I'd have expected a paper (or _maybe_ Tyvek, to protect against the elements) envelope with my address printed on it around the already-sufficient retail packaging, and nothing more.
  - kumarvvr 8y ago
    Maybe Amazon can alter it's processes so that protection from elements can happen at container, truck and last mile transport level, instead of package level. At those levels, long lasting solutions can be used which might be far more eco-friendly in the long term.
  - tomaskafka 8y ago
    Tyvek is a high density polyetylene. In other words, exactly same plastic as the bag you want to replace with it :).
    - bunderbunder 8y ago
      Right. But at least a smaller amount of it than what you get with all those air pillows. And without the huge cardboard box, which is probably the biggest problem in the whole package from a carbon footprint perspective.
- delecti 8y ago
  As far as I know that program is still a thing, but it has only ever been on a very limited subset of products. When it's available, they apply the shipping label directly to the product box and ship it like that. Scroll down on this page for products with it available. It lists over 200,000, which is quite a lot, but is also a relatively small number for their scale: https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Frustration-Free-Packaging/b?ie=UTF8&node=5521637011 https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Frustration-Free-Packaging/b?i...
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

icebraining 8y ago

I don't buy from Amazon, but weren't they pushing for minimal and plastic-free packaging? Has the program been dropped?

kumarvvr 8y ago
Is it so? I haven't heard of it. I recently ordered a set of knives and they came wrapped in a plastic cover (black) and wrapped with a cardboard box. But the knives themselves are packed in plastic and cardboard boxes. If I'd gone to a store, I could have picked them up by hand and avoided the plastic covering required for transport. E-commerce generates additional non-biodegradable waste and that is a problem that has to be solved considering the rapid rise of online shopping.
- JoeAltmaier 8y ago
  At the store just the other day - shopkeeper ringing up the guy in front of me asked "Do you want a bag for that?" It was a product, in a box, wrapped in plastic. And the guy had his own canvas bag out already. If he'd accepted, he'd have had the product in a box in a bag in a bag. My god. When does it all end? What was the product? Plastic bags.
  - paulie_a 8y ago
    It's getting annoying when I go to a store. Put my backpack on the counter and get asked about a bag for the two small items I am buying.
- efields 8y ago
  Don't you think the store vendor just went through the trouble of unwrapping and disposing of the packaging you're describing? I just went through a weekend guilt trip over the baby furniture we bought. Crib and dresser. Wasn't inexpensive, and "built from sustainable forests." 2 pieces of furniture, 5 garbage bags of styrofoam. My alternatives would have been Ikea — more driving, assembly, and time consumed on my end, worse quality — or even higher end American-made products that would have cost 2-5x, where they'd be shipped freight, assembled, and white gloved into my house.
bunderbunder 8y ago
I do, and, apparently, coming from Amazon, "minimal and plastic-free" means that, if I order a single item, it will come in retail packaging (plastic tray to immobilize and cushion, inside a cardboard box that is at least 6 times the size of the product - hence the need for that plastic tray - inside shrinkwrap), and then that item will be placed inside another cardboard box that is at least 6 times the volume of the retail packaging for the item I ordered, so, in order to cushion it, I need a huge pile of those plastic air pillows. It's a pretty huge amount of packaging and cushioning, about the amount you'd need if your package will be handled by drug-crazed chimpanzees (or USPS). But then it just gets loaded into the back seat of the car of whatever gig economy person does the Amazon deliveries in my neighborhood that day. I don't know what Amazon thinks these people are doing to necessitate that volume of packaging, or why they're continuing to employ them given that they think that is the case. tl;dr, if they really were pushing for minimal packaging, I'd have expected a paper (or _maybe_ Tyvek, to protect against the elements) envelope with my address printed on it around the already-sufficient retail packaging, and nothing more.
- kumarvvr 8y ago
  Maybe Amazon can alter it's processes so that protection from elements can happen at container, truck and last mile transport level, instead of package level. At those levels, long lasting solutions can be used which might be far more eco-friendly in the long term.
- tomaskafka 8y ago
  Tyvek is a high density polyetylene. In other words, exactly same plastic as the bag you want to replace with it :).
  - bunderbunder 8y ago
    Right. But at least a smaller amount of it than what you get with all those air pillows. And without the huge cardboard box, which is probably the biggest problem in the whole package from a carbon footprint perspective.
delecti 8y ago
As far as I know that program is still a thing, but it has only ever been on a very limited subset of products. When it's available, they apply the shipping label directly to the product box and ship it like that. Scroll down on this page for products with it available. It lists over 200,000, which is quite a lot, but is also a relatively small number for their scale: https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Frustration-Free-Packaging/b?ie=UTF8&node=5521637011 https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Frustration-Free-Packaging/b?i...

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]