Central vac gave up so I'm installing a new unit and find that I need one 4' length of thin wall plastic pipe, two 90*, and one splice. No-one local has the stuff so I click on Amazon and go to the wife's Prime account, search for "central vac pipe", and it comes up. Then it prompts on the same screen "you might also be interested in" and there are the two types of fittings I need so I check all three and click order now. I had tried to push the order to go to the same vendor but wasn't able to.

They arrive yesterday from the three different vendors which I knew but just look at the waste in the form of delivery and packaging for these 4 little pieces of plastic! Multiply this times over a million orders every day. It sure is convenient but what waste.

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‘Amazon Effect’

Seems the abundance of Amazon waste if overloading recycling centers. Just 1 of numerous articles.

http://www.sfchronicle.com/bay...bump-in-11168558.php

Hay they have to over pack it because of the people that deliver it.
I appreciate that stiff in boxes.
Got a package Friday in a bubble envelope,thank goodness it was only a dog clipper blade cause it had been crushed and stomped on.
In the pic's I see they are bailing cardboard,that's good money sold by poundage unless they haul it to the landfill

Makes me laugh when I order something say 3” by 5” and it shows up in a box 12” x 18” with no protection inside. I’ve had to return several damaged items lately

Oh, jeez, do they ever over-package.

To add insult to injury: They put stuff in boxes way too large for items, then "pack" them with insufficient packing material. Result: If the items have any sharp, heavy or delicate bits, they'll punch through the sides and/or be damaged.

I've a couple times had to have things exchanged for that reason.

 
Amazon sends our 30# bags of dog food in appropriately sized boxes. But they thrown in some of that "packing paper", which gets utterly crushed flat by the bag of dog food. Absolutely worthless waste. I carry the paper to our local UPS/FedEx shipper outlet/vacuum cleaner/sewing machine repair store, and donate it. In return, I get discounts when shipping through them.
 

The foam peanuts are usually made from corn starch. If they’d just include a little cheese dust, it’d be like getting a big bag of (stale) Cheetos for free.

We go through so much cardboard mostly due to Amazon it's crazy... We try to recycle as much as possible, because they come every other week the bin is always overflowing.

If you are so worried about over packaging through Amazon why not just walk to a local store with your own bag and buy things!

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Originally posted by djpaintles:
If you are so worried about over packaging through Amazon why not just walk to a local store with your own bag and buy things!

Funny you should ask. Mainly because the local stores have crap for stock?

Love it when the local store says "We can order that for you and charge as if we did have it in stock." Went through that with one of the big box stores, not long ago. Not only did they charge me more than Amazon would have, but it took them over a week to ship from their own warehouse to their own store, whereas, with AP, I'd have had it w/in two days.

Any other questions?

Amazon and other companies sometimes use boxes of odd sizes, but overall they tend to be useful to me. Some are used to package gifts, ship items to people, or simply haul donations to local thrift stores. Large boxes can be handy when flattened to use on the driveway when working on projects.

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Originally posted by ensigmatic:

quote:

Originally posted by djpaintles:
If you are so worried about over packaging through Amazon why not just walk to a local store with your own bag and buy things!

Funny you should ask. Mainly because the local stores have crap for stock?

Love it when the local store says "We can order that for you and charge as if we did have it in stock." Went through that with one of the big box stores, not long ago. Not only did they charge me more than Amazon would have, but it took them over a week to ship from their own warehouse to their own store, whereas, with AP, I'd have had it w/in two days.

Any other questions?

The point is you can either have speed, convenience and lower cost or less packaging.

Me I choose the former and don't bitch about the packaging. I HATE it when someone mails me something that gets damaged in transit due to poor packaging even more than I hate disposing of shipping peanuts.

'Cept for the fact all Amazon's excess packaging is is excessive box size. It doesn't do a damn bit of good to pack stuff in a way oversized box and put almost no packing material around the goods.

I would think that Amazon has invested a lot of research in figuring out how much of what sizes and kind of packaging material they need to carry.

They can't carry custom sized packaging for everything they sell nor could they carry all incremental packaging sizes. So they had to pick the optimum number of sizes to carry given their shipping volume and warehouse space for the packaging material. There's going to be just a few items where the product fits perfectly in the package because that represents the maximum volume they can ship in that packaging. So, odds are, products are shipped in packages "too large" for them because they have yet to figure out how to successfuly ship products in "too small" of a size.

I've known a number of packaging engineers and they live to save half a cent on every shipping transaction. And if you can save Amazon half a cent on every shipping transaction given their daily volume, I'm sure they'll be willing to listen to you.

I still remember when it was such a big thing for a vitamin company I used to work for when they quit putting in cotton inside every bottle. The yearly savings was at least a couple of million dollars.

quote:

Originally posted by djpaintles:
I hate disposing of shipping peanuts.

Styrofoam peanuts in packages to AZ should be outlawed. With our low humidity, they cling to everything.
 

Go to the amazon site and give feedback for your order. There is a question there regarding packaging.

Here’s an idea. Invent a log sized cardboard baler and start baling your Amazon packaging. Use the bales to heat your house all winter for free. Setup an Amazon store to sell your invention, thus creating more demand for your product. It’s a win/win.

Just seems like they could have put the vac pipe in a cardboard tube instead of a big box with paper stuffing.

Recycling cardboard is a good idea, assuming it actually ends up recycled. I save various size cardboard panels to place under anything I'm changing oil on, lubing a chain, etc., After that cut in small pieces for campfire starter.

Talking with a man who worked for our county recycling I learned the baled cardboard usually ends up being trucked to the landfill because that's cheaper than having to truck it much farther to a paper plant. Same with plastic. I forget what happens with glass if it gets recycled or not, but steel and aluminum definitely does because it's cost effective to recycle.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: ridewv,

quote:

Originally posted by ridewv:
Talking with a man who worked for our county recycling I learned than the baled cardboard usually ends up being trucked to the landfill because that's cheaper than having to truck it much farther to a paper plant. Same with plastic. I forget what happens with glass if it gets recycled or not, but steel and aluminum definitely does because it's cost effective to recycle.

One of our local cities got into some hot water after it was discovered that they had been less than forthcoming about the fact that all the recycling picked up from your curb went straight to the landfill. So they had separate recycling bins, but the city didn't even have a contract with a recycler, since it was cheaper to just dump it.

quote:

Originally posted by ridewv:
Just seems like they could have put the vac pipe in a cardboard tube instead of a big box with paper stuffing.

Their volume shipping means you can't take a moment to chose the proper packing material.