Packing Peanuts
- Thread starter Haviland
- Start date
Another question, packing peanuts seem very wasteful way to pack packages.
whether I receive 1 deck or 8 decks, it's always in the same sized box with a crap ton of packing peanuts!...
Is there a more environmentally friendly less packaging solution, particularly if it's just 1-3 decks?
whether I receive 1 deck or 8 decks, it's always in the same sized box with a crap ton of packing peanuts!...
Is there a more environmentally friendly less packaging solution, particularly if it's just 1-3 decks?
The packing peanuts are all natural. You could literally dump them in your yard, pour water on them, and they would be gone. Just additional nutrients in the soil.
Other packaging tends to be less environmentally friendly. People often suggest bubble wrap, which is not biodegradable and also costs more. That could reduce package size. Paper fill is another option, though it does not tend to protect small objects well and does not degrade as easy as the peanuts. We could do proper styrofoam peanuts (cheaper than the ones we use, and lighter too), but those don't degrade at all.
We could do envelopes instead of boxes, but unless we bring bubble wrap into the mix, or we use otherwise padded mailers, damages in an envelope are nearly guaranteed.
Instead, our warehouse uses as small of a box that they have on hand that will fit your items plus sufficient padding, puts a layer of packing peanuts in, adds your items, and then fills the rest of the box with the peanuts. Yes, we could perhaps have smaller boxes for our smallest size shipments, but smaller = less protection. There are tradeoffs with every decision, and what you see in orders today is what we have arrived at after years of playing around with options. Perfect? No, but it does the job and we don't lose sleep at night with the relatively environment-friendly options we use.
// L