6 ms·

My girlfriend had nail varnish delivered in ana Amazon box 30x30cm it was ridiculous! So I wouldn't be singing too many praises on their packaging stance

cameronbrown 6y ago
Recycleable cardboard boxes are fine, plastic is the big no no.
ehh2heiddn 6y ago
Funny how people buy a single small item have it shipped to them then have the gall to complain about shipping waste.
- theplague42 6y ago
  Plenty of small things get mailed in small packages or envelopes; ever ordered a cable off eBay? Amazon prioritizes shipping speed and low labor cost more than packaging waste.
- pstrateman 6y ago
  even if you buy a bunch of things at once they'll often ship them in nonsensical ways, presumably it reduces their shipping costs
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  Are you consistent about your stance on shipping small items and don't receive any paper mail at your address, either?
- sacred_numbers 6y ago
  What is wrong with buying a single small item online? If done correctly it should have almost zero environmental impact. The marginal environmental cost for a shipped item is the extra fuel burned by the delivery truck due to the weight of the item (in this case the weight is insignificant) plus the fuel burned while the truck is idling when the package is delivered. I would be willing to bet that the environmental cost for those items is pretty tiny compared to shipping waste, so it's pretty reasonable to complain about the shipping waste.
  - panzagl 6y ago
    There's the fuel cost of adding length to the delivery route.
    - crazygringo 6y ago
      Small items are almost entirely delivered by the post office instead of UPS, and the post office is stopping by your house pretty much every day no matter what. Contrast with you personally making a detour in your car to a physical store to buy a single small item -- that actually DOES have a fuel cost. Unless your purchases are always along a route your travel anyways (like your commute), delivery is vastly more fuel-efficient as a general rule.
- _jal 6y ago
  Funny how people lean so far out to criticize others only to find their own butt flapping in the breeze. Amazon does this a lot, no matter what your order looks like. The most pathological I've ever seen was at an old workplace, they shipped 20 boxes of pens (12 packs or whatever size of disposable pens) each in a separate large box. The delivery person took several trips up the elevator to deliver them. But, of course you have an answer to this problem, right?
  - mikepurvis 6y ago
    I think in some of these cases the items are pre-packaged for shipment. There's some inflection point where 90% of customers who order item X order only that item, and it makes sense to have them ready to just slap a label on and go. I'd imagine that the packing stage could become a bottleneck for a busy time at a DC, and pre-packing single items would not only lighten the load during a rush, it would also allow those packing stations to remain occupied during a lull. Obviously, Prime also pushes people toward single-item orders, which helps justify this strategy, and also increases people's dependence on a service level that is hard for competitors to match who aren't at a scale where these kinds of approaches work out. Kind of a fail that the system wouldn't flag a 20-parcel order as something that needed a human to ok it, but who knows, perhaps it was reviewed after the fact and something got tweaked.
- airstrike 6y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGEAiUeiaKs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGEAiUeiaKs
- michaelmrose 6y ago
  The pickers are collecting entire lists of items 1 item for n people is basically the same as n items for 1 person and any given distribution of items. Trucks are dispersed with entire loads full of goods generally going in the same direction. No additional resources are logically wasted until we discuss the last mile where it goes out for delivery and even that is aggregated with many packages to be delivered in the same general area. In order to discover how much waste there is in ordering 1 thing one day and one the next you have to determine exactly how the route would have differed in each case. Given the delivery truck would probably still have been in your town anyway lets imagine for the sake of argument that it drives an additional half mile each way. If we try to imagine the net effect of lots of extra packages lets say all the extra packages in the truck caused a net of 100 miles of travel divided 100 ways. So lets imagine a net cost of 2 miles of travel. So the person probably wasted the equivalent of 1/5 of a gallon of gas. More efficient delivery trucks which fedex and ups are rolling out will make a difference. This relies on a few parties that will directly benefit from doing so. Totally going to happen. Less packaging by actually putting more than one thing in the same exterior packing would make a difference. This relies on a few parties who would benefit slightly. This might in theory happen. Batching orders instead of ordering item A when you actually need it and item B when you need it doesn't matter much and would be difficult to do. It requires millions of people to think ahead and always order things before they need them. This will NEVER happen. The people complaining about shipping waste are addressing a legitimate problem that actually could be solved. Your statement is akin to the people that say why do we need to work on problem foo while their are still children starving in Africa. It's true their are and we ought to do something but in the meanwhile we can still do other things to.
- nullandvoid 6y ago
  Who said it was the only thing bought? There was multiple items amazon decided not to bundle.

cameronbrown 6y ago

Recycleable cardboard boxes are fine, plastic is the big no no.

ehh2heiddn 6y ago

Funny how people buy a single small item have it shipped to them then have the gall to complain about shipping waste.

theplague42 6y ago
Plenty of small things get mailed in small packages or envelopes; ever ordered a cable off eBay? Amazon prioritizes shipping speed and low labor cost more than packaging waste.
pstrateman 6y ago
even if you buy a bunch of things at once they'll often ship them in nonsensical ways, presumably it reduces their shipping costs
heavyset_go 6y ago
Are you consistent about your stance on shipping small items and don't receive any paper mail at your address, either?
sacred_numbers 6y ago
What is wrong with buying a single small item online? If done correctly it should have almost zero environmental impact. The marginal environmental cost for a shipped item is the extra fuel burned by the delivery truck due to the weight of the item (in this case the weight is insignificant) plus the fuel burned while the truck is idling when the package is delivered. I would be willing to bet that the environmental cost for those items is pretty tiny compared to shipping waste, so it's pretty reasonable to complain about the shipping waste.
- panzagl 6y ago
  There's the fuel cost of adding length to the delivery route.
  - crazygringo 6y ago
    Small items are almost entirely delivered by the post office instead of UPS, and the post office is stopping by your house pretty much every day no matter what. Contrast with you personally making a detour in your car to a physical store to buy a single small item -- that actually DOES have a fuel cost. Unless your purchases are always along a route your travel anyways (like your commute), delivery is vastly more fuel-efficient as a general rule.
_jal 6y ago
Funny how people lean so far out to criticize others only to find their own butt flapping in the breeze. Amazon does this a lot, no matter what your order looks like. The most pathological I've ever seen was at an old workplace, they shipped 20 boxes of pens (12 packs or whatever size of disposable pens) each in a separate large box. The delivery person took several trips up the elevator to deliver them. But, of course you have an answer to this problem, right?
- mikepurvis 6y ago
  I think in some of these cases the items are pre-packaged for shipment. There's some inflection point where 90% of customers who order item X order only that item, and it makes sense to have them ready to just slap a label on and go. I'd imagine that the packing stage could become a bottleneck for a busy time at a DC, and pre-packing single items would not only lighten the load during a rush, it would also allow those packing stations to remain occupied during a lull. Obviously, Prime also pushes people toward single-item orders, which helps justify this strategy, and also increases people's dependence on a service level that is hard for competitors to match who aren't at a scale where these kinds of approaches work out. Kind of a fail that the system wouldn't flag a 20-parcel order as something that needed a human to ok it, but who knows, perhaps it was reviewed after the fact and something got tweaked.
airstrike 6y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGEAiUeiaKs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGEAiUeiaKs
michaelmrose 6y ago
The pickers are collecting entire lists of items 1 item for n people is basically the same as n items for 1 person and any given distribution of items. Trucks are dispersed with entire loads full of goods generally going in the same direction. No additional resources are logically wasted until we discuss the last mile where it goes out for delivery and even that is aggregated with many packages to be delivered in the same general area. In order to discover how much waste there is in ordering 1 thing one day and one the next you have to determine exactly how the route would have differed in each case. Given the delivery truck would probably still have been in your town anyway lets imagine for the sake of argument that it drives an additional half mile each way. If we try to imagine the net effect of lots of extra packages lets say all the extra packages in the truck caused a net of 100 miles of travel divided 100 ways. So lets imagine a net cost of 2 miles of travel. So the person probably wasted the equivalent of 1/5 of a gallon of gas. More efficient delivery trucks which fedex and ups are rolling out will make a difference. This relies on a few parties that will directly benefit from doing so. Totally going to happen. Less packaging by actually putting more than one thing in the same exterior packing would make a difference. This relies on a few parties who would benefit slightly. This might in theory happen. Batching orders instead of ordering item A when you actually need it and item B when you need it doesn't matter much and would be difficult to do. It requires millions of people to think ahead and always order things before they need them. This will NEVER happen. The people complaining about shipping waste are addressing a legitimate problem that actually could be solved. Your statement is akin to the people that say why do we need to work on problem foo while their are still children starving in Africa. It's true their are and we ought to do something but in the meanwhile we can still do other things to.
nullandvoid 6y ago
Who said it was the only thing bought? There was multiple items amazon decided not to bundle.