This did not occur by accident, and it is not inertia: the companies involved realized they could save money by limiting their box sizes. In essence, it's cheaper to have one box that fits most of their products -- even if it's massive overkill for some of them.

This isn't likely to change until the various cargo companies change how they price their services and even then it may not help much. The incremental additional cost for an unnecessarily large box is dwarfed by the additional cost incurred by storing, filling and handling all different sizes of boxes.

...now, if customers were willing to pay extra for more-accurate box sizes, then things might change. But I don't see that happening any time soon, do you?

In reality though, if it were shipped in a box the size of that jump drive, I can guarantee you an enormous number would be lost in the mail.

I agree with you, but just playing a little devil's advocate.

Josh,

As with everything, you have to look at what is the biggest problem. Figuring out a way not to lose small packages, or dealing with the problems of over-packaging.

I'm sure we're smart enough to deal with small packages. That might mean a special place for them inside trucks, or a RFID tag, or whatever.. But it's not beyond our technology and organizational skills for sure..

Zappos is guilty of doing this also. A co-worker just received a flat-packed watch from them in a box large enough for two pair of shoes.

A 6x9 bubble envelope would have been more than enough.

I agree with anonymous.

To add to that, it comes down to laziness. That's it. If consumers and companies alike would take the small amount of extra time and energy and focus that into reorganizing our shipping industry to better handle something like (for example) a small package or a assortment of box sizes, then the solution is easily fixable. It's obvious that money would be saved in this endeavor-- nothing less than a higher level of efficiency and organization could be achieved from a move like this. People just don't want to do it, because it's easier to pass the problem on to someone else. The product company passes it on to the shipping company, who passes it on to the consumer, etc.

Let's all work together and use what we can to do great and different things!

And to add to what I previously posted:

Consumers need to take the upperhand in the situation. Be smart about what you buy and sell online, or from a distance! Shop locally, and reduce shipping waste etc that way. Who needs to buy a just USB drive over the internet? If you do make online purchases, choose vendors that sell a variety of products you need so you can have things shipped together!

And question: If a vendor offered an "efficient packaging shipping method" that maybe costs more but uses less material, would you as a consumer be into using that option?

Michael,

Thanks for bringing this to our attention. It looks like the packaging in question came from one of our thrid party vendors. We hold our vendors to very strict standards, and will work closely to them to see if we can't reduce the amount of packaging they use when making these small shipments. We will come back here to post updates on our progress as it happens, or you can follow Direct2Dell's Environment page http://direct2dell.com/one2one/archive/tags/Environment/default.aspx to see what comes of this. We rely on continued vigilance from customers like you to let us know which areas require our attention so we can meet our goal of becoming the greenest tech company in the world. Thank you again for alerting us to this.

Todd Dwyer
Dell Community Liaison - Environment

Yeah, this is a big problem. I work at a local hardware store and we get in 4 or 5 big shipments a week.

So many of the items are packed separately in at least one layer of plastic that doesnt serve a purpose and just gets thrown away.

Our suppliers are getting better about putting something tiny in a big box, but they're just throwing a bunch of stuff together, such as hammers with lightbulbs.

Problems like this are overlooked and discarded, but they really need to be addressed.

If Newegg is reading this: quit with the styrofoam peanuts already!

IMHO, I see as the problem the lazy consumer who purchases a single USB drive and has it shipped. This item and many others like it can easily be purchased locally, saving all the problems you list as a result of wasteful packaging.

Never mind, that guy said it better.

I am an Entrepreneur in Japan, and when I started making my own brand of items, I had to think about packaging. Seriously, in Japan, consumers buy items that must have great packaging: extra packaging for the interior box, and extra flowery paper for the exterior gift wrapping. And then you must put your item on to a big bag, and when it rains, it is better to put an extra plastic bag to protect your big bag.... Moreover, we must wrap everything, every single min items. So much for a country where saving the environment is taken seriously. And the worst thing is that consumer are paying for it. Well, at least all these extravagant wrappings are mostly made from recycled materials.

As the owner of my own company, I found that it actually save monies to put items into a box that fits, and without extra wrappings and plastic materials. This way, I do not have to make more packaging puchase and less labor work. And the best thing is that shipping cost is greatly reduced. It makes me happy, and it makes my customer happy too.

Well, shipping is prices by weight not size. I don't work in a mailroom so I honestly have no freaking idea why that is... but that's what it is.

If it was prices by size, I guarantee this wouldn't be a problem as the companies would obviously change their ways.

Until that happens... I doubt it.

Michael,
Give them a break. I worked at Dell in product development for over 20 years. Trust me....they care about packaging waste. Why? Well besides it being the right thing to do, it costs them money. THe theories about using standardized box sizes saving them money are just that...theories. In this case money was wasted. Dell paid more to have that product shipped.
What disturbed me was how little you were impressed by the fact that a Fortune 500 company was cruising the entire internet, came upon your article, and actually responded. Instead you had to give that last little dig about process improvement. Believe me one of the most annoying parts about working at Dell was they actually spend TOO MUCH time on process improvement. Why do I say that? Simple, at the end of the day, no matter how good your process is, a person needs to think. During my time at Dell all too often I saw people blame the process for failing instead of taking responsibility for their just being stupid. Take another look at those pictures and remember somewhere at the 3rd party supplier there is a person who packed that flash drive in that giant box and thought NOTHING of it. I think if you step back and look at many of the issues posted on this site you'd see that stupidity and apathy are commonplace and a major part of the world's environmental problems. In this specific case the process improvement would be counsel the employee who packed the box and if he isn't capable of changing, give him the opportunity to find employment elsewhere.

--
ed: Maybe I was a bit harsh indeed, and I do appreciate that they took the time to write. But all the excuses sound the same after a while. It's always the third party suppliers. I'd rather challenge them to keep improving and crack that problem rather than absolve them this fast.

This trend is on the way down. My company writes muti-carrier shipping software. It used to be that only "express" packages where subject to what is known as a dimensional weight charge. This means that for every cubic inch of space there is a weight that the carriers will charge. Which ever weight is larger is what the customer is charged.

Two years ago UPS decided to apply "Dim Weighting" to ground shipments as well. FedEx, DHL and the U.S. Post Office have followed suit. (Ok USPS has not followed suit as far) My resellers and customers are now reporting a big desire to minimize shipping container size and the need to over pack.

The holy grail in the shipping industry will one day be a cubing program. A piece of software that, once feed all the items dimensions, will tell the warehouse worker what box size to choose to minimize the shipping container size. More importantly it will tell the worker how to fit the items in the box. Not everyone is good at Tetris.

Michael,
I agree, the excuses to all start to sound the same. But believe me...in this case I know from experience it WAS a third party supplier. As I said in my previous post, I worked in product development at Dell. I was what Dell called a "System Manager' . A system manager has responsibility for all development aspects of a product. From the actual design of the product to the packaging used. For Dell shipped product, each part has an associated package. For example, a hard drive that you order to upgrade a Dell system has an associated customer kit. That kit has structured within it everything that you receive as a customer. From the hard drive itself to the box used to ship it. Unfortunately, there are times where the people creating the bill of materials cannot anticipate what a given individual will do when posed with something that doesn't fit the process. (You can't dumb proof the world for everyone, but you can try) What can be done, and Dell does do this, is start corrective action to resolve the problem. Believe me, the folks at Dell thought a giant box for a tiny flash drive was a moronic as the rest of us. I won't get into a discussion of the moral values of large corporations other than to say there truly are people at Dell like Todd who take this stuff seriously. But, on the larger front, corporations are ultimately about making money. This situation besides being a "moral environmental responsibility" issue, is also just plain bad business. The giant box costs more than an appropriately sized box both to make and to ship. Todd will run this up the flag pole and shape some heads, even though some of those heads may be very thick.

There needs to be a nationwide/worldwide campaign on this issue. Does anyone remember the CD package called the Longbox? A campaign by musicians and others got the oversized/wasteful package cancelled. Sams Club
and Costo both sell products in oversized packages
for display purposes-very wasteful.
Morningstar Foods,makers of veggie sausage,etc.
uses a box for its 8-10 oz. packages that would hold 2 to 3 times as much product.
Again I state that there needs to be a worldwide
campaign to address this issue-any takers

Michael,
I agree, the excuses to all start to sound the same. But believe me...in this case I know from experience it WAS a third party supplier. As I said in my previous post, I worked in product development at Dell. I was what Dell called a "System Manager' . A system manager has responsibility for all development aspects of a product. From the actual design of the product to the packaging used. For Dell shipped product, each part has an associated package. For example, a hard drive that you order to upgrade a Dell system has an associated customer kit. That kit has structured within it everything that you receive as a customer. From the hard drive itself to the box used to ship it. Unfortunately, there are times where the people creating the bill of materials cannot anticipate what a given individual will do when posed with something that doesn't fit the process. (You can't dumb proof the world for everyone, but you can try) What can be done, and Dell does do this, is start corrective action to resolve the problem. Believe me, the folks at Dell thought a giant box for a tiny flash drive was a moronic as the rest of us. I won't get into a discussion of the moral values of large corporations other than to say there truly are people at Dell like Todd who take this stuff seriously. But, on the larger front, corporations are ultimately about making money. This situation besides being a "moral environmental responsibility" issue, is also just plain bad business. The giant box costs more than an appropriately sized box both to make and to ship. Todd will run this up the flag pole and shape some heads, even though some of those heads may be very thick.

David R.
Actually the EU is being pretty forceful on the issue of packaging. They are making the companies legally responsible for the disposition of a product's shipping container. You buy something from company A, they ship it to you, you call company A, they come dispose of the shipping container.

Oh, Wow!

If you think, the perspective behind this huge packaging is unclear to me. Small would've be less waste + more reliable keeping in mind the size of the actual package.

Mike