"Waste of Packaging" Finalist: Empty nano Box

Not to defend this necessarily, but anything involving electronics (eg, look at the blister pack for a memory chip for a camera) is often going to have supposedly wasteful packaging.

The function is actually to keep the five finger discount to a minimum. The nano's a pretty expensive device for its size, and highly valuable for a thief (eBay anyone?).

The other reason it's going to be chosen over, say, the small card Ryan is recommending is for selling purposes -- a small card doesn't market itself as easily as a larger package does.

I have an acquaintance here hwo does sustainable product design by night, and corporate product design by day, and she kind of clued me in to some of these things -- because at first glance so much of it seems pointlessly wasteful.

A better alternative might be to have a kiosk which draws attention, then paper cards within the kiosk to take to the counter. It's just going to depend on the retailer.

While I agree there are better ways to sell this product, Ryan's suggestion to 'buy only what you need and pay no attention to advertising, make your own music, go see live music, think about wat[sic] you buy and how it affects the world!' is simplistic to the point of being rediculous. It's taking a legitimate concern and tacking something akin to "And ponies for everyone!" on the end of it.

I have been in many stores that sell items using a small slip of paper for the item. They could have a big sign and a small printed carboard (easy to recycle) slip to take to the checkout with out all the plastic.

really, "puppies for everyone!" would be more appropriate, but in order to realize a reality the world dearly needs we need to be idealists, and dreamers. changing the mindset of the retail monster is a slow proccess, and if they realize that theres no market for unwarrented waste they will jump on board, untill then....PUPPIES FOR EVERYONE!

Most stores that use this technique (buying movie tickets at Costco comes to mind) don't give you the placeholder when you buy the item, so it's not like they're wasting one blister pack for each item sold -- they just recycle the same couple-dozen boxes over and over again. Still wasteful, of course, but not necessarily as bad as this particular case seems to indicate.

this is a great contest.

i try to stay away from things that have wasteful packaging.

it is also good for us to email companies about their wasteful packaging. actually it would be great if everyone got in the habit of emailing the companies about the all environmental aspects of their products, constantly. i don't do it enough but i will make it a habit to do it for all the questions and comments i have.

it is nice though to see companies that are conscious about cutting down on packaging.

please excuse this last off-topic remark. my wish to treehugger: the last comment column on the right is nice. a great step in the right direction. it would be really nice if there was an option to view the entire blog by last comment. a gallery view with thumbnail and title, like this, which is provided by these people.
that way you could save the space that the "new comments" column takes up in the regular view and just have a link to the last comment view. the regular blog wouldn't have to be changed at all besides the link.

this way posts could stay alive instead of just dissapearing and the site could be more interactive.

thanks for the improvements though, like the new comments and getting rid of those similar posts.

this is a great contest.

i try to stay away from things that have wasteful packaging.

it is also good for us to email companies about their wasteful packaging. actually it would be great if everyone got in the habit of emailing the companies about the all environmental aspects of their products, constantly. i don't do it enough but i will make it a habit to do it for all the questions and comments i have.

it is nice though to see companies that are conscious about cutting down on packaging.

please excuse this last off-topic remark. my wish to treehugger: the last comment column on the right is nice. a great step in the right direction. it would be really nice if there was an option to view the entire blog by last comment. a gallery view with thumbnail and title, like this, which is provided by these people.
that way you could save the space that the "new comments" column takes up in the regular view and just have a link to the last comment view. the regular blog wouldn't have to be changed at all besides the link.

this way posts could stay alive instead of just dissapearing and the site could be more interactive.

thanks for the improvements though, like the new comments and getting rid of those similar posts.

Amazing. My preferred approach is what I get in Dixons: cheap blister-packed items in blister packs on the shelves, expensive stuff boxed behind a display counter. Walk up, you can see the iPods and their feature lists, and ask for one. Box handed over, take to checkout.

And how is Apple suppose to be 'Corporate Socially Responsible' if they're wasting paper & plastic on ridiculous advertising? They're definitely not doing their part in preserving the ecology