hmm... perhaps i shall reconsider my excessive gift packaging gag i was planning... or maybe do it out of old boxes that would otherwise simply have been recycled... and then insist on taking back the boxes for recycling, unless the recipient was going to use the boxes for something else...

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Don't forget to order all your lab supplies together.
Even with minimal packaging, shipping a bottle of ethidium bromide on its own seems like a waste.

I agree that seems a 'little' excessive ...

They probably don't stock small enough boxes.

We frequently send & receive crystal & glassware. The only way to ship it safely is to double and sometimes triple box it. They don't treat packages like you do. I could swear they sometimes must mishandle boxes intentionally that have fragile stickers on them. I have first hand seen staff toss a batch of boxes 10 feet onto the dock at the USPS during unloading?!

So individual packaging of the items and layering is the only way to protect delicate items from mishandling by USPS, UPS, Fedex and avoid the insurance hassle plus loss of unique and irreplaceable items.

We personally reuse pretty much all packaging materials and cardboard received.

In general, and I think certainly with electronics, great efforts have been made to minimize packaging. It is just when they have to be shipped in another box, getting a close fit can be an issue.

Wow.

I thought that the packaging was for a stainless steel trash can, not a tiny bottle.

When I look for new companies/people to do business with I always ask how they package things. If they overpackage I'll ask them to change their ways or I won't do business with them, and I let them know it's their over use of packaging (or the materials, i.e. styrofoam) that stopped me from doing biz with them.

Yes, the packaging seems somewhat excessive, but I think the article fails to communicate just how highly carcinogenic 1 gram of ultrapure ethidium bromide is. "Highly toxic" is a complete understatement. It is typically used in the lab to stain DNA in electrophoresis gels so it is visible under UV light.

I guess I'd rather have a seemingly "excessive" amount of packaging (which from the picture looks reasonably easy to reuse and/or recycle) for such a toxic chemical that is better left in a container than spilled in transit exposing humans and the environment to a highly carcinogenic compound.

The sad truth is that if one person sues a small company for negligent shipping containers of highly toxic materials, they could lose their entire business just like that. What the actual packaging is isn't mentioned but most of it atleast looks recyclable.

I'm not sure what ethidium bromide ultrapure bioreagent is, but aside from the flamability and toxicity, I would imagine it is also expensive, and that the sender was trying to make sure it arrived intact. It doesn't look like designed packaging, but more like something a shipping clerk did to make damn sure that he doesn't get fired for letting the expensive little bottle get broken in transit.

I do know that some of what appears to be overkill seen in consumer product packaging is that to be shipped individually to a consumer the packaging must pass tests required by carriers (UPS, FedEx, et. al.) which involve such abuse as the package being dropped from a specified height (for light objects it is roughly waist high) once each on all six sides and four corners without damaging the product. Take an expensive and/or delicate item from your home, design repeatable packaging (not wads of newspaper), box it up, and drop it ten times from waist height (chest high for short people). You'll see the challenge.

If product packaging does not pass the required shipping tests, the carrier will not assume any responsibility for shipping damage (regarless of how much they abuse the package). Any damaged product is then a liability to the manufacturer, not to mention the unhappy customer. Damaged product is much more expensive than cardboard and foam, so it is economically better to add packaging than to risk damaged product.

In this case there might be justification for all that packaging, though the person who ordered the stuff (and who probably know better than use how toxic it really is) seemed to think that this was excessive.

But the sad thing is, many other things are packaged in ridiculous ways.. USB keys for example.

Yeah, that's way too much. People need to be educated better on how to package things.

You can blame the FAA for this, not the company mailing this product. I work for an environmental consulting company and we sometimes have to send gasoline samples to laboratories by air express. This type of packageing shown in this picture is required by the FAA for small qualities of volatile chemicals. It is also very expensive. All that stuff cost about $140.

I used to work in a chemical supply warehouse. There are special requirements for shipping certain chemicals. One of the worst I ever worked with was nicotine (think about it smokers). The only thing you could possibly complain about is the size of the packaging (they make smaller cans and boxes). The shipper probalby has a limited selection. You'd hear far more screaming if you found out that crap leaked all over your shipment of special green food or kids clothes or whatever.

Adding more chemicals to the order might not help. They'd probably need to have separate containers for each chemical. It's been a while...

All good points.

Regardless of how toxic the chemical is:
- the steel bin should have been smaller. There's no SOP out there saying you need X amount of packaging.
- the second box is good enough to ship, why add the larger box?

Sadly, there's no standard on purchasing more. Usually at large places, you get free shipping with over $50-$100, but at other places, you pay more. There's no reason why you should couple items in shipping... and usually, you don't buy in packages, you buy when you need it.

And smaller packages save room in trucks and planes.

I wonder if the packaging scales at all with the cost of the reagent. Do they package 100 micrograms of fluorescently labeled antibody in a truck of its own?
I mean, ethidium bromide has been around a long time, you'd think they have a decent packaging scheme by now.

I, too, am bothered that there is no standard way to scale shipping with purchased amount. At some places (like Brookstone) the cost to ship increases based on the price (not the weight or size or fragility) of what you buy. What gives?

Hmmm, I think that you should find something better to whine about than the packaging on Ethidium Bromide. Safety is paramount, and no, don't blame the FAA.

Every layer of packaging on that chemical is extremely necessary.

"the second box is good enough to ship, why add the larger box?"

The second box is not a box, it's a place holder to keep the metal container from being jostled/dented in transit.
The (likely aluminum) container is durable, but wouldn't stand well to being stacked alone in the smaller box, as it would be vulnerable to damage from the sides.

Be thankful you can even buy it. You can't get Carbon Tet for NMR or research anymore. Anyway, direct your outrage elsewhere.

I think I know which company he bought this from and the irony is that they used to ship us glass plates packed so poorly that routinely half of them would arrive broken.

But this is really an IATA regulatory issue. They require everything up to the metal can. After that the distributor adds additional layers so they have a rectangular box to handle.

But don't discount the importance of proper protection for hazardous items. This is would of the most dangerous substances molecular biologists are required to work with routinely.

This level of packaging is typically required by shipping companies for hazardous chemicals. Ordering multiple chemicals from the same vendor, at the same time, is definitely the way to go.

Where I work, there would be a different person in charge of each layer of packaging.

Hey guys, you forget that hazardous substance shipments are regulated by the DOT and other bodies ( Dot's 49-CF regs specifically if it's in or through the US and IATA if it goes by air).

Those boxes are REALLY expensive AND regulated by the UN .. each box will have a specific UN number assigned to it as well to designate it's strength and for which different packing groups and hazard classes can be packed into it. I'm all for being eco friendly and green, but being a hazmat shipper I know those regulations are put in place for a really really good reason.

To put it in perspective, some of those substances (The amounts vary and I don't have my 49CFR or IATA books handy) can actually be transported on passenger carrying aircraft. Think about it....

Also, to someone who said you can reuse DG boxes, I don't believe you actually can. We're required by our company to use new ones, but I think it's also a federal and UN reg as well.

So, think about that sitting in an inaccessible cargo hold under the aircraft you're in. IT's both a flammable AND toxic Do you REALLY think it's excessively packed?

More support for the regulatory people. Those packing materials are expensive. The can could have been used for this size as well as larger bottles, but only one per can no matter the size. The 1st box is sized to match the can. Multiple bottles would have gone in multiple cans each in their box but then could have been put together in a larger outer box.

In general the regs are neccessary for these types of materials and no you can't just choose not to use toxic materials for this or many other applications.

I too work in a lab, and am angry that they send two vials of antibody in a large Styrofoam box, inside another box – with the packing material.
Beckman Coulter is the worst for this.
At least BioSciences over nights them in a bubble envelope

I agree that excessive packaging is a huge problem. At work the other day I order a simple table skirt and it came in a huge box with lots of extra packaging surrounding it. It was totally unnessecary, the table skirt should have been shoved into an envelope and shipped to me. It would have worked just fine. I wrote to the company and suggested that they change the way they packages items that can't be damaged

This is what makes me want to go into packaging design. I am currently a graphic design student, but I am seriously considering going into package design to create smart, elegant, eco-friendly packaging.

this case could be excused on the grounds of safety and the lack of product knowledge by the packer.

on the other hand, this case with AT&T is just waste, plain and simple: AT&T: Your plastic bag. Delivered.

it's the weirdest thing. i used to be in charge of ordering supplies for a lab. we'd get totally harmless stuff, like amino acids in tiny plastic bottles, that would come in individually wrapped boxes like above. even if we ordered them together! they each arrived in their own, huge box.

but then, we'd get super-toxic stuff, like powdered acrylamide, in just one single crummy box with a thin (0.5 cm) smear of bubble wrap. for large glass bottles! the box was about 1 inch taller than the 1 liter bottles.
no surprise, we got several cracked bottles, in two separate shipments.
acrylamide - which is used to make not-so-harmful polyacrylamide gels - is a neurotoxin and carcinogenic and shouldn't be inhaled. it's nasty stuff.
i phoned the company shipping it to get someone fired for mailing this kind of stuff with so little packaging. at least we knew what it was, but the poor fedex delivery guys just trust that they're safe handling the boxes.
the company didn't even believe me, it was that bad. i had to send photos.

for ethidium bromide, which ain't good for you but is a bio lab staple, this kind of packaging is still excessive. and the multiple boxes won't contain it anyway. it should just be in multiple levels of plastic or whatever. a smaller metal box would actually be a lot stronger than this huge one. larger and larger boxes are not safer. and the boxes are a lot more flammable than the 1 gram of ethidium bromide, I would guess.

shipping regulations are in general a bit messed up. we should have tighter regulations on toxics and really flammable stuff - pure oxygen, organic solvents etc - but it's really not that hard to get stuff like that, even though it can blow up. but it's really impossible to mail something like human DNA, even though a human hair or little bit of spit has some DNA in it. I mean, we lick envelopes, right? Yet, I was forbidden to send a tiny, harmless, purified, sterile DNA fragment to Spain because it was a "human body part." Go figure.

OMG that is a personal pet peeve of mine....too much packaging. Sooo much of it is unnecesary and just ends up in the dump. Does anyone else shop for things that require less packaging?