11 ms·

Amazon increased US plastic packaging despite global phase-out

64 points by laurex 3y ago

PaulHoule 3y ago
I remember when they put "frustration free packaging" on the agenda in a time when that was never talked about. Today they are the the slowest e-commerce company to ship packages to me except for Temu, even if I did pay a lot for a membership. I'm not expecting any innovation from them anymore, just Temu quality at 3x the price.
- Spivak 3y ago
  I think Amazon has two niches where it's still good. * If you know exactly what name brand thing you want to buy Amazon is the best buying / return experience, usually the cheapest way to acquire it, and the fastest delivery. * If you don't know exactly what you want it's a pretty good search engine on top of AliExpress. As soon as you see two of the same pictures you can get it for at least half the price buying direct.
  - hombre_fatal 3y ago
    Googling it, AliExpress still requires the item in its original packaging of you want to return it? If so, Amazon still dominates for anything worth returning. I can even drive the return item to the Whole foods down the street to return it at a dedicated Amazon kiosk.
  - zdragnar 3y ago
    > As soon as you see two of the same pictures you can get it for at least half the price buying direct. I don't know about this. I've certainly seen a few cases where it was true, but the shipping cost always brought it back up to Amazon price levels, or the shipping time was so long that I was happier paying a bit more to get it sooner. Maybe I'm just buying the wrong things...
- criley2 3y ago
  This feels like a comment that does not capture the actual Amazon userbase. In my top 10 American city, Amazon delivers multiple slots same day, guaranteed no-extra-cost 2 day shipping, and offers a variety of 5-7 options that include digital rewards, local pickup, etc. No competitor is in the same ballpark. Nearly every other e-commerce site I use, from small to large businesses, take 2 days to process the order and ship the dang thing and 4-6 more to arrive. Amazon ships in a matter of hours, and will even pay a driver uber-style to run it to your house immediately, for $3 extra. It's completely routine for me to shop from a small to medium business for my gardening hobby or photography hobby and wait 7-14 days for order processing and another 7-14 days for shipping. I waited 28 days for some camera filters, filters I chose to buy from the company instead of Amazon, even though they sold the same ones through Amazon on 2 day shipping. I waited 28 days! Even for returns, Amazon operates return centers in all of my local Whole Foods, and they don't require boxing or labels. Every other e-commerce site I use makes me jump through hoops, find a printer, print a label, find a box, and then find the some random low-cost shipment center just to do a return. With Amazon, I show up with an unboxed product, they can my phone, and I'm out. I recognize the level of harm Amazon does to society in a variety of ways, from their hostility to workers rights, their abusive use of contractors to reduce liability, their abuse of single use plastics and other pollutants, but on the topic of delivery speeds and customer experience, they are so far beyond any competitor that it's not even a comparison. Amazon has invented a style of e-commerce convenience that no competitor can rival at all.
  - abadpoli 3y ago
    Yea, the whole “Amazon takes forever to deliver” thing is something I literally _only_ see mentioned on HN, where for some reason it gets repeated a lot. In real life, I can’t even remember the last time it took longer than 2 days to deliver something to me, and I’ve never heard of any of my friends, coworkers, or acquaintances complain about it. Everyone I know still loves Amazon because of how fast it is. There’s a weird disconnect here for some reason.
    - PaulHoule 3y ago
      That’s because HN readers are geographically diverse. I live about two hours from a major AMZN distribution hub, people I know who live an hour away work there. AMZN is always 5 days. My hunch is that the criterion for fast shipping is close to “do you have a Cheesecake Factory in your town?”. If you’re in a large city with competitive shopping, AMZN wants to compete, if you live in a place which gets less attention from major retailers, AMZN goes with the herd. It is no wonder why AMZN has premium service to NYC (Wouldn’t want Jim Cramer to say that AMZN is the slowest shipper) and Washington DC (If your congressman gets fast shipping he thinks his constituents do too) and Los Angeles (otherwise slow shipping from AMZN would be a running gag on all the sitcoms)
- Jcampuzano2 3y ago
  While I agree on the packaging concerns, I live in a major US city and have lived in others and Amazon is by far the fastest shipper of any platform. I'd wager 95% of my purchases are delivered either the same day or the next and rarely have I had any issues. Very rarely do I have to wait more than 2 days for anything at all whereas that is the standard with any other shipper. Obviously your mileage may vary depending on your location but this is echoed by many I know who live in major cities. There are no other options that can compete with that shipping time in my city.
  - SoftTalker 3y ago
    Yes it all depends on how close you are to a distribution center and how built-out their local delivery service is. For me, most Amazon deliveries take 2-3 days and most often delivered with the US mail but lately I am seeing more Amazon vans (or unlabled white rental vans) so it may be changing.
  - rascul 3y ago
    Amazon can't seem to get anything to me in less than 4 days. Newegg and Walmart are usually 3 or sometimes 2 days. I'm under 150 miles from an Amazon distribution center but I'm not in or near a major city.
- thaumasiotes 3y ago
  They also don't bother to provide enough packaging to prevent the contents from being damaged in transit. It's absurd. > I remember when they put "frustration free packaging" on the agenda in a time when that was never talked about. But this isn't accurate at all; evil packaging was a topic of discussion before Amazon came out with "frustration free packaging". I remember buying something at Fry's and, knowing I would barely be able to open it, asking at checkout if they could open it for me. And they refused! Here you can see some packaging criticism published several years before Amazon's effort: https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2002/09/30/those-goddamn-containers https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2002/09/30/those-goddamn-... From the commentary: > When you buy a peripheral anymore, you might as well just get a jigsaw before you leave the mall. We don't lock up our prisoners this well. Why our gamepads and so forth must be hermetically sealed is beyond me - have they done something wrong? Is it for their own protection? If they don't want me to have the controller, and that's fine, maybe a better plan would be to keep it out of the store in the first place. > Or, and this is a theory with some factual weight, perhaps the people that make these products stoke such a furnace of contempt for the consumer that good sense never enters the equation.
beejiu 3y ago
I can only assume attitudes towards plastics are different in the US to Europe? Here, sustainable packaging has become expected. If there's a non-plastic way to package a product, that is what consumers expect. Just today I watched a video about Papa John's where they proudly proclaimed moving from cardboard packaging to plastic for "visuals" (https://youtu.be/9RXObjS639M?t=457 https://youtu.be/9RXObjS639M?t=457). This just wouldn't wash in Europe.
- tiltowait 3y ago
  A lot of restaurants have moved to this style of packaging. Even if it does improve heat retention/reduce sogginess[0], it's frustrating. [0] They claim it does, but I'm not sure I notice any difference.
  - consp 3y ago
    Styrofoam is best, it's also horrible for the environment.
    - tristor 3y ago
      Styrofoam melts with hot foods and ruins the taste. It's one of the things I hate about take-out and why I rarely order take-out for any hot foods, because they always taste like plastic.
  - sgtnoodle 3y ago
    I'm friends with a small batch gelato maker. He mainly sells individual scoops, but he also sells pints. He started out using fully compostable pint containers, but their permeability leads to ice crystal formation while the product is stored. He's switched to more traditional pint containers, and the improvement is noticable.
- dbspin 3y ago
  That's actually astonishing. As so often it feels like the reactionary culture of the US is actively dragging the world down. Especially in relation to environmental protection, privacy rights and conflict escalation.
spirit557 3y ago
Every single return Ive done or seen at my drop offs goes into a single use plastic bag + plastic from the tape they use. 99% of my items could ship in a paper bag and don't need plastic bubble wrap. The bubble bag or plastic bag is always completely oversized for the item. I could go on but I think everyone knows the same form their own experience with amazon.
- geraldwhen 3y ago
  The paper and cardboard products weigh more, which at Amazon scale means an incredible amount of fuel used. The trade offs aren’t cut and dry.
Havoc 3y ago
It’s the multiple layers that get me. Frequently things are triple wrapped in plastic between underlying supplier(s) and amazon Plastics has its merits on weather proofing sure but come on
bell-cot 3y ago
At least around me (SE Michigan), I get the impression that "I obtain most things from Amazon, and buy at whim" has become a core part of many people's self-images and lifestyles. Which locks the Hypocrisy Lobes of their brains into Ring -2 Denial mode.
- SpicyLemonZest 3y ago
  Hypocrisy in what? Denial of what? I don't think many consumers have made any sort of personal commitment to not use plastic.
  - bell-cot 3y ago
    Within SE Michigan, I live in small city where branding yourself as being pro-environment/anti-pollution seems very fashionable. Similar for living in huge houses, and having several large SUV's, and indulging in regular long-distance air travel, and ...
gsky 3y ago
End of the day all that plastic ends up in developing/undeveloped world. We should ban trash exports
RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
In terms of weight, CO2 emissions, durability, and protecting the product, plastic is probably a lot better for the environment as a whole than a lot of “sustainable” packaging. In the grand scheme of things plastic is a very minor part of our environmental problems - though it does have some nice pictures you can take. However, it seems to attract a bunch of people who think they prove their environmental commitment by irritating people as much as possible. Multi-use plastic bags and paper bags are much more energy intensive to produce than single use plastic bags. Paper bags also fail at much higher rates (handles come out, small tears propagate rapidly, any moisture weakens it). In addition, paper products such as straws and cups need to be coated for use with liquids. The coating (likely PFAS) is probably worse overall than if the straw or cup were just made out of plastic.
- throwway120385 3y ago
  The word "probably" is doing a lot of lifting in this post.
- warcher 3y ago
  There’s a lot of strange psychology at work in the plastics packaging media zeitgeist. It’s hard to think of comparable examples of stuff that matters so little in the grand scheme but gets so many people so bothered. People really really want to be heated over plastic packaging, all evidence indicating that it just doesn’t matter relative to our real environmental issues.
- wongarsu 3y ago
  That depends on your delivery chain. For tumbling down a conveyor at a sorting center, getting thrown around, fall damage, cuts, slashes, sliding over rough surfaces, etc cardboard is vastly superior. For sitting out in the rain plastic is better. It might just be that Amazon delivery chains in the US looks very different from most other places. A US package might never see the inside of a DHL sorting center, but spend a lot of time outside, making plastic a valid choice. A package in Europe on the other hand won't see more than two minutes of rain but a lot of rough handling designed for cardboard boxes, making plastic a suboptimal choice (even before environmental regulations)
wongarsu 3y ago
A part of the reason might be how package delivery works in the US. In Germany a package delivery involves the courier seeing the receiver face-to-face and handing them the package (typically with a signature, but Amazon isn't as thorough there). As I understand it that is the norm globally. In the US on the other hand a package delivery seems to consist of the the courier putting the package on the front porch, or even just throwing it on the property of the receiver. There it might be exposed to the elements for multiple hours, something cardboard boxes aren't good at. In the scenario where packages are handed over face-to-face the advantages of plastic are pretty small and it's much easier to phase out. In the US the increase in plastic might just be a reaction to degrading delivery standards, which cause increased returns due to water-damaged products.
- rob74 3y ago
  In the meantime, some online shops in Germany (not Amazon) are testing reusable plastic packaging (https://bp-consultants.de/en/reusable-bags-for-e-commerce-on-trend-the-case-studies-of-tchibo-and-no-boxx/ https://bp-consultants.de/en/reusable-bags-for-e-commerce-on...) - to return the empty package, just fold it and drop it into a mailbox.
  - SoftTalker 3y ago
    I assume they've worked out that the fuel and other environmental impact of sending back all those packages via the mail service outweighs the impact of simply disposing of or recycling them locally?
    - rob74 3y ago
      They haven't, or otherwise they wouldn't be testing them. The energy required to make a new plastic or paper bag is also non-negligible. And, even if you put the bag in the trash, it still cause some environmental impact when it's transported and (hopefully) recycled.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
snakeyjake 3y ago
In 2022 this was true, but today it is 2024 and I have noticed that Amazon has all but stopped sending me packages in plastic bags IN MY AREA. IN MY AREA they seem to have switched to a new style of cardboard box that has a perforated seam along one side which aids in opening, and they appear to be closed with adhesive strips inside the flaps rather than tape. For smaller items they seem to have switched to paper mailers with some kind of shredded fabric for padding.
logifail 3y ago
I've become more and more cynical about the incentives involved in recycling. There's not much transparency regarding what happens to to the various types of materials we all collect, sort and "recycle". Localities and countries compete to claim that they "recycle XX% of XYZ" but no-one's actually looking at what happens to the containers of XYZ once they're taken away from your recycling point. "The European Union’s decision to ban exports of plastic waste in and outside Europe is threatening to collapse the market for the collection and recycling of plastic packaging"[0] Although in this case banning exports of plastic waste might actually be the right thing to do, you do wonder* what was happening to all that plastic waste that was "recycled" over the decades. [0] https://www.euractiv.com/section/circular-materials/news/recycling-market-in-europe-faces-collapse-after-eu-waste-export-ban/ https://www.euractiv.com/section/circular-materials/news/rec... * Spoiler: much of it wasn't recycled at all...
- alienicecream 3y ago
  In my county they banned the collection of any recycling that was bagged. So if you put your recycling in a bag to contain it, the garbage man won't pick it up. So now what happens is everyone puts their recycling loose in a blue bin and the wind blows all the bins over and scatters the recycling all over the neighborhood and eventually into the nearby ponds and ravines. If you complain about the policy they tell you that it's because the recycling plant can't deal with the bags, it clogs up their machines. So in an age of automated assembly plants and advanced robotics the entire county here is at the mercy of a recycling plant that can't obtain a machine that can cut a bag open. It just goes to show what a farce the whole program is. Now they're talking about making the rules even more restrictive, like using clear garbage bags so people won't put recycling in the garbage, even though that is going to increase the trash accumulating in the environment. It's a bureaucratic box-ticking and back-patting scheme.
  - logifail 3y ago
    > If you complain about the policy they tell you that it's because the recycling plant can't deal with the bags, it clogs up their machines[...] Machines?! Most press photos that show the inside of plastic recycling sorting plants show a surprising number of Mk I human beings standing at a conveyor belt helping sort out the, err, rubbish.
gottorf 3y ago
I bought like 10 different things in one order from Amazon the other day. I was hoping it would come in one big box; none of it was fragile and could easily have been packed that way. but no, it came in 10 different paper packaging.

64 points by laurex 3y ago

I remember when they put "frustration free packaging" on the agenda in a time when that was never talked about. Today they are the the slowest e-commerce company to ship packages to me except for Temu, even if I did pay a lot for a membership. I'm not expecting any innovation from them anymore, just Temu quality at 3x the price.

Spivak 3y ago
I think Amazon has two niches where it's still good. * If you know exactly what name brand thing you want to buy Amazon is the best buying / return experience, usually the cheapest way to acquire it, and the fastest delivery. * If you don't know exactly what you want it's a pretty good search engine on top of AliExpress. As soon as you see two of the same pictures you can get it for at least half the price buying direct.
- hombre_fatal 3y ago
  Googling it, AliExpress still requires the item in its original packaging of you want to return it? If so, Amazon still dominates for anything worth returning. I can even drive the return item to the Whole foods down the street to return it at a dedicated Amazon kiosk.
- zdragnar 3y ago
  > As soon as you see two of the same pictures you can get it for at least half the price buying direct. I don't know about this. I've certainly seen a few cases where it was true, but the shipping cost always brought it back up to Amazon price levels, or the shipping time was so long that I was happier paying a bit more to get it sooner. Maybe I'm just buying the wrong things...
criley2 3y ago
This feels like a comment that does not capture the actual Amazon userbase. In my top 10 American city, Amazon delivers multiple slots same day, guaranteed no-extra-cost 2 day shipping, and offers a variety of 5-7 options that include digital rewards, local pickup, etc. No competitor is in the same ballpark. Nearly every other e-commerce site I use, from small to large businesses, take 2 days to process the order and ship the dang thing and 4-6 more to arrive. Amazon ships in a matter of hours, and will even pay a driver uber-style to run it to your house immediately, for $3 extra. It's completely routine for me to shop from a small to medium business for my gardening hobby or photography hobby and wait 7-14 days for order processing and another 7-14 days for shipping. I waited 28 days for some camera filters, filters I chose to buy from the company instead of Amazon, even though they sold the same ones through Amazon on 2 day shipping. I waited 28 days! Even for returns, Amazon operates return centers in all of my local Whole Foods, and they don't require boxing or labels. Every other e-commerce site I use makes me jump through hoops, find a printer, print a label, find a box, and then find the some random low-cost shipment center just to do a return. With Amazon, I show up with an unboxed product, they can my phone, and I'm out. I recognize the level of harm Amazon does to society in a variety of ways, from their hostility to workers rights, their abusive use of contractors to reduce liability, their abuse of single use plastics and other pollutants, but on the topic of delivery speeds and customer experience, they are so far beyond any competitor that it's not even a comparison. Amazon has invented a style of e-commerce convenience that no competitor can rival at all.
- abadpoli 3y ago
  Yea, the whole “Amazon takes forever to deliver” thing is something I literally _only_ see mentioned on HN, where for some reason it gets repeated a lot. In real life, I can’t even remember the last time it took longer than 2 days to deliver something to me, and I’ve never heard of any of my friends, coworkers, or acquaintances complain about it. Everyone I know still loves Amazon because of how fast it is. There’s a weird disconnect here for some reason.
  - PaulHoule 3y ago
    That’s because HN readers are geographically diverse. I live about two hours from a major AMZN distribution hub, people I know who live an hour away work there. AMZN is always 5 days. My hunch is that the criterion for fast shipping is close to “do you have a Cheesecake Factory in your town?”. If you’re in a large city with competitive shopping, AMZN wants to compete, if you live in a place which gets less attention from major retailers, AMZN goes with the herd. It is no wonder why AMZN has premium service to NYC (Wouldn’t want Jim Cramer to say that AMZN is the slowest shipper) and Washington DC (If your congressman gets fast shipping he thinks his constituents do too) and Los Angeles (otherwise slow shipping from AMZN would be a running gag on all the sitcoms)
Jcampuzano2 3y ago
While I agree on the packaging concerns, I live in a major US city and have lived in others and Amazon is by far the fastest shipper of any platform. I'd wager 95% of my purchases are delivered either the same day or the next and rarely have I had any issues. Very rarely do I have to wait more than 2 days for anything at all whereas that is the standard with any other shipper. Obviously your mileage may vary depending on your location but this is echoed by many I know who live in major cities. There are no other options that can compete with that shipping time in my city.
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  Yes it all depends on how close you are to a distribution center and how built-out their local delivery service is. For me, most Amazon deliveries take 2-3 days and most often delivered with the US mail but lately I am seeing more Amazon vans (or unlabled white rental vans) so it may be changing.
- rascul 3y ago
  Amazon can't seem to get anything to me in less than 4 days. Newegg and Walmart are usually 3 or sometimes 2 days. I'm under 150 miles from an Amazon distribution center but I'm not in or near a major city.
thaumasiotes 3y ago
They also don't bother to provide enough packaging to prevent the contents from being damaged in transit. It's absurd. > I remember when they put "frustration free packaging" on the agenda in a time when that was never talked about. But this isn't accurate at all; evil packaging was a topic of discussion before Amazon came out with "frustration free packaging". I remember buying something at Fry's and, knowing I would barely be able to open it, asking at checkout if they could open it for me. And they refused! Here you can see some packaging criticism published several years before Amazon's effort: https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2002/09/30/those-goddamn-containers https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2002/09/30/those-goddamn-... From the commentary: > When you buy a peripheral anymore, you might as well just get a jigsaw before you leave the mall. We don't lock up our prisoners this well. Why our gamepads and so forth must be hermetically sealed is beyond me - have they done something wrong? Is it for their own protection? If they don't want me to have the controller, and that's fine, maybe a better plan would be to keep it out of the store in the first place. > Or, and this is a theory with some factual weight, perhaps the people that make these products stoke such a furnace of contempt for the consumer that good sense never enters the equation.

beejiu 3y ago

I can only assume attitudes towards plastics are different in the US to Europe? Here, sustainable packaging has become expected. If there's a non-plastic way to package a product, that is what consumers expect. Just today I watched a video about Papa John's where they proudly proclaimed moving from cardboard packaging to plastic for "visuals" (https://youtu.be/9RXObjS639M?t=457 https://youtu.be/9RXObjS639M?t=457). This just wouldn't wash in Europe.

tiltowait 3y ago
A lot of restaurants have moved to this style of packaging. Even if it does improve heat retention/reduce sogginess[0], it's frustrating. [0] They claim it does, but I'm not sure I notice any difference.
- consp 3y ago
  Styrofoam is best, it's also horrible for the environment.
  - tristor 3y ago
    Styrofoam melts with hot foods and ruins the taste. It's one of the things I hate about take-out and why I rarely order take-out for any hot foods, because they always taste like plastic.
- sgtnoodle 3y ago
  I'm friends with a small batch gelato maker. He mainly sells individual scoops, but he also sells pints. He started out using fully compostable pint containers, but their permeability leads to ice crystal formation while the product is stored. He's switched to more traditional pint containers, and the improvement is noticable.
dbspin 3y ago
That's actually astonishing. As so often it feels like the reactionary culture of the US is actively dragging the world down. Especially in relation to environmental protection, privacy rights and conflict escalation.

spirit557 3y ago

Every single return Ive done or seen at my drop offs goes into a single use plastic bag + plastic from the tape they use. 99% of my items could ship in a paper bag and don't need plastic bubble wrap. The bubble bag or plastic bag is always completely oversized for the item. I could go on but I think everyone knows the same form their own experience with amazon.

geraldwhen 3y ago
The paper and cardboard products weigh more, which at Amazon scale means an incredible amount of fuel used. The trade offs aren’t cut and dry.

Havoc 3y ago

It’s the multiple layers that get me. Frequently things are triple wrapped in plastic between underlying supplier(s) and amazon Plastics has its merits on weather proofing sure but come on

bell-cot 3y ago

At least around me (SE Michigan), I get the impression that "I obtain most things from Amazon, and buy at whim" has become a core part of many people's self-images and lifestyles. Which locks the Hypocrisy Lobes of their brains into Ring -2 Denial mode.

SpicyLemonZest 3y ago
Hypocrisy in what? Denial of what? I don't think many consumers have made any sort of personal commitment to not use plastic.
- bell-cot 3y ago
  Within SE Michigan, I live in small city where branding yourself as being pro-environment/anti-pollution seems very fashionable. Similar for living in huge houses, and having several large SUV's, and indulging in regular long-distance air travel, and ...

gsky 3y ago

End of the day all that plastic ends up in developing/undeveloped world. We should ban trash exports

RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago

In terms of weight, CO2 emissions, durability, and protecting the product, plastic is probably a lot better for the environment as a whole than a lot of “sustainable” packaging. In the grand scheme of things plastic is a very minor part of our environmental problems - though it does have some nice pictures you can take. However, it seems to attract a bunch of people who think they prove their environmental commitment by irritating people as much as possible. Multi-use plastic bags and paper bags are much more energy intensive to produce than single use plastic bags. Paper bags also fail at much higher rates (handles come out, small tears propagate rapidly, any moisture weakens it). In addition, paper products such as straws and cups need to be coated for use with liquids. The coating (likely PFAS) is probably worse overall than if the straw or cup were just made out of plastic.

throwway120385 3y ago
The word "probably" is doing a lot of lifting in this post.
warcher 3y ago
There’s a lot of strange psychology at work in the plastics packaging media zeitgeist. It’s hard to think of comparable examples of stuff that matters so little in the grand scheme but gets so many people so bothered. People really really want to be heated over plastic packaging, all evidence indicating that it just doesn’t matter relative to our real environmental issues.
wongarsu 3y ago
That depends on your delivery chain. For tumbling down a conveyor at a sorting center, getting thrown around, fall damage, cuts, slashes, sliding over rough surfaces, etc cardboard is vastly superior. For sitting out in the rain plastic is better. It might just be that Amazon delivery chains in the US looks very different from most other places. A US package might never see the inside of a DHL sorting center, but spend a lot of time outside, making plastic a valid choice. A package in Europe on the other hand won't see more than two minutes of rain but a lot of rough handling designed for cardboard boxes, making plastic a suboptimal choice (even before environmental regulations)

wongarsu 3y ago

A part of the reason might be how package delivery works in the US. In Germany a package delivery involves the courier seeing the receiver face-to-face and handing them the package (typically with a signature, but Amazon isn't as thorough there). As I understand it that is the norm globally. In the US on the other hand a package delivery seems to consist of the the courier putting the package on the front porch, or even just throwing it on the property of the receiver. There it might be exposed to the elements for multiple hours, something cardboard boxes aren't good at. In the scenario where packages are handed over face-to-face the advantages of plastic are pretty small and it's much easier to phase out. In the US the increase in plastic might just be a reaction to degrading delivery standards, which cause increased returns due to water-damaged products.

rob74 3y ago
In the meantime, some online shops in Germany (not Amazon) are testing reusable plastic packaging (https://bp-consultants.de/en/reusable-bags-for-e-commerce-on-trend-the-case-studies-of-tchibo-and-no-boxx/ https://bp-consultants.de/en/reusable-bags-for-e-commerce-on...) - to return the empty package, just fold it and drop it into a mailbox.
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  I assume they've worked out that the fuel and other environmental impact of sending back all those packages via the mail service outweighs the impact of simply disposing of or recycling them locally?
  - rob74 3y ago
    They haven't, or otherwise they wouldn't be testing them. The energy required to make a new plastic or paper bag is also non-negligible. And, even if you put the bag in the trash, it still cause some environmental impact when it's transported and (hopefully) recycled.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

snakeyjake 3y ago

In 2022 this was true, but today it is 2024 and I have noticed that Amazon has all but stopped sending me packages in plastic bags IN MY AREA. IN MY AREA they seem to have switched to a new style of cardboard box that has a perforated seam along one side which aids in opening, and they appear to be closed with adhesive strips inside the flaps rather than tape. For smaller items they seem to have switched to paper mailers with some kind of shredded fabric for padding.

logifail 3y ago

I've become more and more cynical about the incentives involved in recycling. There's not much transparency regarding what happens to to the various types of materials we all collect, sort and "recycle". Localities and countries compete to claim that they "recycle XX% of XYZ" but no-one's actually looking at what happens to the containers of XYZ once they're taken away from your recycling point. "The European Union’s decision to ban exports of plastic waste in and outside Europe is threatening to collapse the market for the collection and recycling of plastic packaging"[0] Although in this case banning exports of plastic waste might actually be the right thing to do, you do wonder* what was happening to all that plastic waste that was "recycled" over the decades. [0] https://www.euractiv.com/section/circular-materials/news/recycling-market-in-europe-faces-collapse-after-eu-waste-export-ban/ https://www.euractiv.com/section/circular-materials/news/rec... * Spoiler: much of it wasn't recycled at all...

alienicecream 3y ago
In my county they banned the collection of any recycling that was bagged. So if you put your recycling in a bag to contain it, the garbage man won't pick it up. So now what happens is everyone puts their recycling loose in a blue bin and the wind blows all the bins over and scatters the recycling all over the neighborhood and eventually into the nearby ponds and ravines. If you complain about the policy they tell you that it's because the recycling plant can't deal with the bags, it clogs up their machines. So in an age of automated assembly plants and advanced robotics the entire county here is at the mercy of a recycling plant that can't obtain a machine that can cut a bag open. It just goes to show what a farce the whole program is. Now they're talking about making the rules even more restrictive, like using clear garbage bags so people won't put recycling in the garbage, even though that is going to increase the trash accumulating in the environment. It's a bureaucratic box-ticking and back-patting scheme.
- logifail 3y ago
  > If you complain about the policy they tell you that it's because the recycling plant can't deal with the bags, it clogs up their machines[...] Machines?! Most press photos that show the inside of plastic recycling sorting plants show a surprising number of Mk I human beings standing at a conveyor belt helping sort out the, err, rubbish.

gottorf 3y ago

I bought like 10 different things in one order from Amazon the other day. I was hoping it would come in one big box; none of it was fragile and could easily have been packed that way. but no, it came in 10 different paper packaging.