I confess, I’ve been sucked into the Amazon Subscribe and Save program. I hate having to battle parking lots and fight the crowds at Target just to buy toilet paper and tissues. It’s so much easier to let the regular staples come to me once a month. I also do the same with miscellaneous other items – books, the odd tool. (Between Netflix and AppleTV, I’ve cut way back on Blu-rays, and 99% of my music purchases are mp3 downloads.) And now I find I’m living with a perpetual scourge: Empty boxes. Boxes of all sizes that I have to break down, fold up, stuff into the recycling can or somehow bundle up. And the stuffing material, which (thankfully) is mostly recyclable as well, but is bulky. Cardboard in, cardboard out. Cardboard shredded up and pulped. Cardboard reformed into new cardboard. Rinse and repeat. Over and over and over.
Let’s have re-usable boxes!
Imagine FedEx and UPS had reusable rigid plastic (or, better, starch-fiber) tubs that they used to deliver stuff to us! You get stuff, you unload the tub, you put it out for pickup, just like empty milk bottles of the days of yore. As our economy shifts ever more towards ordering online with delivery, we need to figure something out, because this boxes thing is getting ridiculous! My paper recycling is picked up only twice a month. Right now I have at least two dozen boxes large and small that I need to break down for pick-up and pulping. And by the time the next pickup happens, I’ll have more boxes. Compared to this, the paper shopping bags was a pittance. Let’s stop the madness and get with something more sustainable in the shipping business! Please?