Come on, Amazon (The Overpackaging Continues)

I've blogged about my Amazon Prime experiences over the past almost a year, receiving overpackaged items very regularly (you can read my blog from last week here plus other ones here and here and here and here.).

I’ve had a few deliveries since then and the overpackaging continues.

Child gates:
These three child gates arrived in two separate shipments (although all the same brand and ordered at the same time) and in huge boxes much too large for them. What a waste of cardboard.

An overly large box with a lot of wasted space as usual.

One gate in a giant box.

Another large box for the other two gates.

So much wasted space. 

Much less cardboard could have been used in these shipments.

Child safety latches:
The package itself was very efficiently packed with the ten safety latches all in a perfectly sized cardboard box, but Amazon sent them in a huge bubble envelope.

Amazon is one of the biggest retailers in the world and certainly seems to be the biggest online retailer in North America (and growing every day). If Amazon could improve their packaging, think of the waste that could be avoided and the precious resources saved.

Amazon has a neat feature on their app, where you can report back to them how the packaging was on items that you received. You can say if the package was well protected or not, if the package was too big or really too big or just right, and leave written comments too. I have used this feature several times, but it doesn’t seem to be improving the packaging from Amazon. I have also called customer service when items have been destroyed in transit and have complained about the bad packaging, but this has also not seemed to improve things.

In the meantime, I guess I’ll be hauling huge amounts of cardboard boxes to the curb on recycling day. Come on, Amazon, let’s reduce the waste for everyone’s sake.