Too much Packaging!

[emeritus]

I save that brown scrunched-up paper. Smoothed out, it can be rolled up for storage and used for things like wrapping parcels.

About a year ago, "Private Eye" mentioned a Council whose recycling rate had fallen from over 80% to just 50%. They had entered into a contract to generate eccentricity by burning the residual waste, but the problem was that the residual waste had so little calorific value it couldn't produce enough energy. To avoid having to pay swinging financial penalties for failing to generate enough electricity, they were obliged to burn some of the recycled plastic.

[Refugee]

There in a rubbish power station in Newhaven that in certain weather conditions can put out a plume of toxic fumes that rebounds off banks of sea fog and comes back in land.
Seaford has had the fumes come in a couple of times now.

[Hartley118]

Originally Posted by emeritus

.............They had entered into a contract to generate eccentricity by burning the residual waste.................

I find that increasing age tends to generate a certain amount of eccentricity all by itself!

Martin

[Refugee]

Originally Posted by Hartley118

I find that increasing age tends to generate a certain amount of eccentricity all by itself!

Unbalanced phases perhaps. You need to cancel it out with an eccentric load on the generator.

[emeritus]

Curses on autocorrection! I really must get some reading glasses for computer screen distance!

[G6Tanuki]

A while back I did some IT consultancy for one of the UK online retailers of clothes/shoes etc and got talking to one of their 'fulfilment' people.

Apparently they have a number of contracts with different couriers (to avoid issues if one goes on strike or goes bust). Typically the contract allows them - for a fixed price per day/month - to ship a certain number of packages up to a certain weight/volume. More than that agreed limit and they pay extra, same goes for packages of a higher weight/volume than the basic contract.

This can cause some things which seem strange to the consumer - like two pairs of shoes ordered at the same time to be sent in two different consignments because if sent in one package they would be over-weight or over-volume for the basic bulk contract and so incur an extra charge. The dispatch software works all this out - equally it keeps a log of how many consignments each courier has been sent and how close this is coming to the basic contract limit - if it sees that limit being approached for a particular courier it will switch consignments to another courier. So your two pairs of shoes ordered at the same time may be delivered by different couriers, sometimes even on different days [if holding-over one pair to the next day keeps within the daily-contract].

All rather fun, and made possible by the ubiquity of barcodes/QR-codes and some serious software.

[emeritus]

Reminds me that when I sent a Singer sewing machine motor and foot control to a forum member a couple of year ago, it was much cheaper to send them by Royal Mail as two small parcels rather than one large one.

[stevehertz]

Originally Posted by McMurdo

There was an 'inside the factory' episode where they were at Amazon. The computer decides what box is to be used for the client's order and the packer has to use that one. Recycled brown paper packing is dispensed as seen fit.

I'd imagine that the whole operation has been time-motion studied to the tiniest degree, and this way is simply the fastest and cheapest.

My partner having worked at Amazon, she confirms that that is indeed the case. If the decision was left to the packers, item X would be shipped in a variety of box sizes dependent upon the experience level or grey matter capacity of the packer, with inevitable consequences.

And yes even though the boxes can sometimes be considered oversize, and sometimes for a variety of reasons, wrong/unsuitable, in general its better to have your goods shipped in a larger box and arrive safely, than one too small with insufficient packing and it arrive crushed. Only last week I received a can of spray paint jammed into a box actually slightly shorter than it. The top cap was split, the now bent over nozzle had been depressed and paint had been discharged into the box. Had the can been in box a couple of inches longer it would not have happened. No, I don't have a problem with oversize boxes.

[Craig Sawyers]

I had problems with packing from RS some years ago. I was ordering four, very high price computer grade RIFA electrolytics (47,000 uF, 100V massive ripple current). They had three attempts before a set arrived without dents in them by banging together in the too-small box and inadequate individual component padding.

But although I find massive boxes with tiny things in them irritating, it is all recyclable. Or retain for anything else you need to send.

[Boater Sam]

I ship radios abroad in recycled boxes, the bigger the better.
In fact so big that most carriers won't take them, DPD will take larger than most.
My usual box is 1100 X 600 X 900.
Its what swivel reclining chairs are delivered in, kit form.
I put a skid bottom of 4 pieces of slate lath wood nailed together in a rectangle and glued to the box with pva.
Each side of the box has a cross of more slate lath inside so that the ends are in the corners.
I use hard expanded polystyrene sheet in the bottom and all 4 sides next to the box.
The radio sits in a complete 6 sided wrapping of first white paper, then layers of bubble wrap, then upholstery foam off-cuts.
The top space is again filled with polystyrene slab.
The box is then taped well and strung around with binder twine, 2 or 3 passes a side and the ends brought to the top and plaited into a substantial handle.

Over kill? maybe but radios packed like this have gone around the world without damage, customers have praised the condition they arrive in.

The only cost item in this pack is sticky tape, everything else is recycled waste and the time taken is not too much more than a bad packing job.

[dseymo1]

Originally Posted by Refugee

The only way I know of getting rid of mixed plastic is to mix it with hot tar in order to make the tar go further and then use it to coat road stone and lay it on a road.
It will then get used for another 12 years until the road becomes a teenager when it will get tarmacne and become puck marked with all those grumpy teenage zits that brake car springs this is when there will be a chance to recycle some more plastic.
It cuts the use of tar by about 30% from what they said on a radio program. They have not yet tried in in UK though.

But what happens to the plastic as the road wears? Presumably it's ground to a fine dust, potentially more harmful than the original material.
While disposal is certainly a legitimate concern, there seems to be little said about the finite oil resources used in manufacturing plastics. We've come to rely on both oil and plastic to such an extent that there will, I suspect, be deep regret when it all runs out and it's realised that life-critical items, rather than biscuit wrappers or whatever, could have been made instead.

[electronicskip]

I buy lots from Amazon , so I tend to keep most of the boxes and packaging for reuse to send out at birthdays , Christmas and other forum members.
If opened carefully the first time its very easy to reuse as the quality of the boxes and bubblewrap/packaging is normally really good.

[Refugee]

Originally Posted by dseymo1

But what happens to the plastic as the road wears? Presumably it's ground to a fine dust, potentially more harmful than the original material.
While disposal is certainly a legitimate concern, there seems to be little said about the finite oil resources used in manufacturing plastics. We've come to rely on both oil and plastic to such an extent that there will, I suspect, be deep regret when it all runs out and it's realised that life-critical items, rather than biscuit wrappers or whatever, could have been made instead.

The wear particles will go the same way as those from the tar itself along with the particles from the tyres on the vehicles running on the road.
The particles should be small enough for sunlight to break them down into carbon and individual atoms as tar particles do now.
It would just reduce the amount of new tar being made from oil.

[ajs37]

They seem to have run out of Jiffy bags!

[Uncle Bulgaria]

I got a CPC order today as well. A similar sized box as above, part of which was ten 1W resistors...all individually packaged in plastic bags with tear-off strips, the spare room taken up with plastic air bags. The order would happily have gone in a C6 envelope.

I don't buy from Amazon ever for high-falutin' reasons, but the lack of a local shop I can go to on my bicycle for electrical components, using my own bags as I do for shopping, forcing online sales with the bonkers packaging shows up how little individuals can actually do in the face of this distressing plastic waste.

[Buzby123]

I did a job in a book seller's warehouse a few years ago. They sent books out, like Amazon do. Most books were packed completely by machine.

The book was measured, then a strip was cut off a roll of cardboard. The strip was then folded and glued around the book, and the label attached. This machine packaged about forty books per minute.

It's certain that Amazon, and most other online suppliers, have machines like this. The Amazon packages that have folded-in ends with no glue look like they have been done by machine.

[stevehertz]

At the Rugeley Amazon, books are, or were until a few years ago, packaged by people, not machines. Of course there's a computerised aspect in that the size box etc is specified to the packer by way of a screen (based on the product code), then each component part of the package/box has to be scanned to prove that the stated packaging has been picked and used.

The best so far for want of packaging is when SHMBO bought 18 cans of beer from Amazon, they just put a label on the box, 10/10. They were left on the doorstep and no one nicked them despite "Stella" being prominent from the roadside.

[Lloyd 1985]

I recently had a Farnell order, came in 2 boxes, 1 box was small and had all the components and a couple of project boxes stuffed into it, the other box was quite large, and all that was in it was 2 cans of foam cleaner and a load of brown scrunched up paper stuff! If it was done to protect the ‘hazardous’ cans from damage during shipping, then they would have failed at that, as the cans were at one end of the box, and the packaging at the other…

Regards
Lloyd

[G6Tanuki]

I don't fret about packaging: here, plastic packaging goes into the stove [it makes a good firelighter, as does old shoes, fat collected from the grill-pan, offcuts of plastic drainpipe, old roofing-felt etc] and cardboard/paper gets ripped-up for use as animal-bedding - then when it's been trampled/piddled/dunged-on it's relocated to the orchard and veg-patch where it adds moisture-retaining humus to my otherwise rather poor chalk-substrate soil.