Take this memory card.
Memory cards are packaged securely in plastic containers, protecting them from low-impact abuse such as dropping or smashing with another light-weight object.
However, a card of this thickness:
Required a box of this depth:
And this much paper:
to ship.
The point of all this is that the amount of packing material used to ship a fairly securely-packaged item was excessive and lacked any thought of the resources available to us. I shouldn't single out Costco, as I have also received wastefully-packaged items from Amazon. Without exception, anything I have ordered from e-bogu.com has arrived in a compact form, lacking fluffy preparation.
I worked for United Van Lines as a packer. There, we learned methods to prepare items for shipping using minimal materials. Understanding how items can work to cushion one another, as well as pressure-withstanding points on glassware were concepts I began studying immediately upon being hired. These concepts have served me well in the real world, and are not hard to learn.
In this case, a padded envelope would have been sufficient for shipping this card--which I could have carefully opened and reused myself. Or a regular envelope, with two pieces of cardboard inserted. Either could have been stamped 'fragile', or 'hand-cancel', as Costco probably takes care of its own mail preparation. Even a piece of styrofoam paper wrapped around the card would have sufficed.
Libraries ship items to one another all the time, either using canvas mailing bags or padded envelopes, which get reused until they are falling apart and can't be salvaged.
In unwrapping that ball of paper, I estimate that 5 or 6 meters was torn off a huge roll, wadded up, and thrown in the box. There are more compact ways, which are every bit as fast, to use smaller amounts to pad a box. This method is not hard to learn.
Environmental issues are, once again, becoming a prominent conversation topic. While I cannot quote direct sources, I have been told that the United States uses something around 85-90% of the available resources in the world on any given day. At first, I found this hard to believe, but then I started paying attention to the area around me.
The amount of one-time resource consumption at the University of Arizona is jaw-dropping. As there is no cafeteria-style eatery on campus, lunch-goers rely upon takeaway-style fast-food restaurants. Almost everything served on campus is in a disposable container. If one approaches the Student Union after the lunch rush, and discovers that facilities maintenance hasn't been able to keep up with emptying the trash barrels, one will find bins overflowing with throwaway paper, plastic, and styrofoam products. Never mind the amount of food which isn't consumed and disposed of, and the number of local homeless people it could feed--the containers themselves are also a concern.
In Asia, an arguably poorer world region, food bought from local vendors comes on plastic plates. These plates are reused. One can see they are clean, because the huge washtubs filled with boiling hot water are clearly visible to all. In India, drinks are served in reusable cups, or people can carry their own.
A diver working in Thailand once remarked that since they don't have the Home Depot nearby, people reuse what's laying around. In other words, they get creative. Oil barrels and gas cans, as they float, apparantly make good dive buoys.
I think more about living in Japan, and the number of waribashi/throwaway chopsticks, which are used and thrown into moerugomi/burnable garbage. While Japan makes a bigger country-wide effort to control resource consumption and recycling through recycling laws, there are still flaws in the system.
Due to hygenic concerns, restaurants will not allow you to bring your own container for drinks or food. Nor will they allow you to reuse materials previously gotten from their establishment. I do not accept waribashi, but instead bring my own chopsticks or use the ones I have at home.
Taking bags back to grocery stores for reuse yields eye raising and provokes thoughts of being mental from bored and underpaid checkout clerks, who find the little bit of extra effort to reuse bags too troublesome because they are not already conveniently placed on the metal bars for filling.
Taking bags back to grocery stores for reuse yields eye raising and provokes thoughts of being mental from bored and underpaid checkout clerks, who find the little bit of extra effort to reuse bags too troublesome because they are not already conveniently placed on the metal bars for filling.
In comparison, supermarket shoppers in Germany and Australia rely upon reusable canvas bags to carry their food home. When I visited a grocery store in Singapore, I had to pay a small price to receive shopping bags to carry back (it wasn't much, only SGD$ 0.25, or roughly USD $0.05 a bag).
I want to reuse containers I receive from restaurants on the rare occasion that I get takeaway. Does anyone have any ideas to help me?
I found this site today on the Internet:
The depletion of the World's resources is causing me a bit of concern, as I think about ways we can all cut down on the products we use. Recycling is a good effort, and I recycle everything I can. Do you?
Yes, I will reuse all that paper I received. Probably when I move. As the box is a bit small, I will have to recycle it. Fortunately, there is a recycle bin available.
If we don't start thinking about this now, there may be a big problem in 100 years, when there is no more land to bury garbage under, or patches of trees (alive or dead) to cut.
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