Amazon Subscribe & Save: Savings on Price, but Not Necessarily Packaging

Another overly big box, half empty and with a ton of packing paper. What a waste of packaging.

A little less than a year ago, I became an Amazon Prime member. I started subscribing to various products over time using Amazon's Subscribe & Save program. Now I have several products in my subscription rotation including baby products like diapers, household cleaners and paper, and even hemp hearts. While I appreciate some of the savings, they have only been in cost and not packaging (and one has to wonder how much unnecessary packaging adds to the cost of items on Amazon).

I’ve had a variety of deliveries over the many months that I’ve tried this service. Some of the deliveries have been filled with damaged items due to inadequate packaging materials and overly large boxes, while others have been undamaged but in overly large boxes with tons and tons of packing paper. But not all of the packaging has been bad. Some packages have been done very well with the minimum amount of packing paper or bubble wrap and appropriately sized boxes.

My most recent delivery of Subscribe & Save items (this was only about half of my items for March that arrived in this box) was a repeat of Amazon’s use of overly large boxes and too much packing paper (for my other posts on Amazon's overpackaging, please see here and here and here and here and here and here.)

So much packing paper.

And a half empty box.

All of this packaging material left after. Yes, I can recycle it, but half wasn't needed, so it's still a great waste.

I can only hope that Amazon will start listening more to the report feature that they provide on their site where customers can report whether their package was well protected or not, whether the box was a good size or not, and provide written comments about the packaging if they desire. I have used this feature over and over again, but many packages that I receive from Amazon still are overpackaged with wastefully large boxes or envelopes and too much packaging materials used (or not enough in the case of Amazon regularly not wrapping liquids like cleaners with plastic and then them sometimes spilling all over the box and its contents during shipment).

Amazon ships so many packages a day all over the world, that all of their waste in packaging will add up and create a mountain of recycling, garbage, and waste that we will all come to regret. Come on, Amazon!