Amazon.com Working To Cut Down Wasteful Gadget Packaging
by Jaymi Heimbuch, San Francisco, California on 11. 3.08
Samples of Amazon.com's frustration-free packaging
Most people have had this experience:
Head to a store to get a flashdrive, micro flash card, or some other tiny gadget, and you’re handed a giant plastic case that contains it. You go home, wrestle the case open, likely cutting yourself in the process, and think to yourself, “Why on earth do they do they package this tiny thing in this massive plastic shell??”
Well, finally a major company is asking the same thing and offering “Frustration-Free Packaging.”
Amazon.com is now providing customers with an option to cut down on wasteful and frustrating packaging. The company currently lists 19 products that are available in streamlined containers that often include recycled cardboard. The packaging samples shown on the website still look a little wasteful due to their size relative to the products, but at least it is a definite improvement over the alternatives.
Amazon.com hopes that within a few years, they’ll have as many products with frustration-free packaging as they do thankful, cut-free customers. Electronics manufacturers have juuuust started catching on. And with luck, in a few years Amazon won’t be the only retailer offering such a cool service.
Via Engadget
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OMG, that looks funny.
MMC card in such a huge box :D
this is great news! The purpose of the ridiculously large and difficult packaging is to protect against shrinkage in B&M stores. Since Amazon is online only, there's no need for such wasteful, frustrating packaging. Kudos to Amazon for thinking and acting in a responsible manner.
19 products? Seriously? Well if they're just launching this initiative that may not be so bad, but they'd better scale it up quickly for it to matter much.
"MMC card in such a huge box :D"
You've obviously never shipped something really small in also really small box. Doing so is asking to lose it, possibly permanently.
We used to order a strange screw size for work time to time. The company tried to ship in appropriate sized boxes, and finally gave up and went to boxes only slightly smaller than this.
i can see the point about losing small items in small packages....but with things like memory cards and screws, why not send them in an ordinary envelope...like the ones that make it across the world every day without getting lost? its great that amazon is taking these steps, but 19 products is nothing. they need to step it up.
I second the padded envelope. They're all most items really need, the shipping cost is cheaper, and if they're the all-plastic envelopes they are easily recycled.
That's great to see that Amazon is stepping up their game. As well, they'll save $$ on the long run. Win-Win.