Amazon Prime, Halo SleepSack, and Safety 1st Secure Plug Protectors: Overpackaging that Our Children Will Not Appreciate in the Future

I ordered a sleep sack for my baby (this is what is recommended now instead of using a blanket) plus safety covers for the electrical outlets around my house last week from Amazon Prime. I’ve mentioned before in previous posts (you can find them here and here) that I have a membership because I don’t get out of the house much anymore and infants don’t come with a lot (even though they apparently need a lot). 

The package arrived in a box as usual. I must point out that this delivery was the third one from Amazon Prime which failed to reach our house by the guaranteed date. Fortunately, Amazon Prime has excellent customer service, so they have made this right. What Amazon has not done right is packaging (again, see posts listed above).

I thought the box looked big when I received it. Here it is on my washing machine.

Nothing under that plastic bubble wrap.

Lots of empty space in this big box.

Another big box for the recycling heap.

A baby sleep sack is small, light, and already packaged in a bunch of stuff, or at least it was in the case of the Halo SleepSack. Electrical plug protectors are small and probably pretty hard to damage. These Safety 1st ones were in a pretty small plastic package. The box that Amazon used was about twice as big as was needed. 50% wasted space, 50% wasted cardboard, 50% more space taken up on a plane/truck/train, 50% more cardboard and resources needed to produce the box, and 50% more box to process at the recycling plant.

These two little items shouldn't need such a big box.

There was also plastic bubble wrap in the box (and it's the annoying large bubble wrap that's not that useful for reusing- I reuse fine bubble wrap on trips where I take it with me to bring back more fragile souvenirs), presumably to use up all the wasted space. It’s not like a cloth sleep sack or a box of plastic plug covers would break. I don’t understand why Amazon couldn’t put this in a small bubble mailer or cardboard mailer. Why a box?

More plastic that will either be thrown out or recycled, but probably not reused (on trips I reuse the finer bubble wrap in my suitcase to bring back more fragile souvenirs).

I am disappointed also by the amount of packaging used on the Halo SleepSack. This is specifically a children’s product and as such should consider the generation that it is targeted at and what their future is going to be like. This sleep sack was encased in a plastic bag, had a huge cardboard wraparound, a plastic hanger unusable for anything in a home (must be for hanging these in a store), and tissue paper inside the sleep sack. This is way too much packaging. My child and the other children of that generation are going to be really annoyed when they see how we have squandered all of these resources. With the amount of packaging used on so many different products and in shipping, it seems like all that will be left in a few decades is a big garbage dump/ recycling heap.

Lots of packaging on this sleep sack for babies.

After the bag is removed there's more packaging . . .

A big cardboard surround.

And a little plastic hanger.

And tissue paper.

 Even the packaging on the Safety 1st plug protectors leaves something to be desired. The package is hard plastic and is not even full all the way up, there’s a significant gap of empty space. Then there’s a cardboard back. Why couldn’t they just go in a thin little plastic bag? They probably don’t get damaged that easily. They look pretty robust. No one can reuse the partial plastic box after and while a little plastic bag couldn’t be reused either, it would take up less plastic and resources to make than a partial plastic box.

The plug protectors are encased in a semi-rigid plastic.

It's like a box without a back (cardboard at the back). It wasn't even full.

There's also a paper insert at the front.

While it’s good that all of this packaging is recyclable, it’s not good that we’re using so many resources and sending them straight back for processing again on recycling day. It’s not like I can reuse any of this waste, so it’s going straight out with the recycling. A truck has to come around and pick it up, it has to be stored and processed, then it has to be made into something else. That takes resources to do too. Why not just prevent this waste by using less packaging? Overpackaging is senseless and future generations will not thank us for it.

More stuff for the recycling pile.