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About Those Air Cushions in Amazon Packages

theatlantic.com

231–236 of 236 posts

Re: About Those Air Cushions in Amazon Packages

#231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's consistent with shared responsibility. We work together as citizens to make laws that express collective goals. Some cities have banned plastic bags quite effectively. Perhaps we should federally regulate shipping environmental impacts as well.

Yep, there's a bag ban here in Austin. Stores can't hand them out.

Same in the Bay Area plus we just passed more laws against plastic bags in the past election.

Re: About Those Air Cushions in Amazon Packages

#232
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't this just mean that the machines were chosen unwisely?

There's more to it than machine choice, there's also process surrounding the machines. The current process probably assumes a certain compliance rate of people "not putting soft plastic in the bin". In so much as we are citizens who don't want to endanger the recycling process, I believe we have at least a mild ethical duty to at least not knowingly do just that.

Doesn't this just mean that the process surrounding the machines was chosen unwisely???

Re: About Those Air Cushions in Amazon Packages

#233

"Something I didn't quite know how to dispose of" Is it just me or can you not just pop them and throw them in the trash

Because they have a recycling symbol on them, yet most recyclers (inc. mine) specifically say do not recycle thin film (such as these) even if they have a symbol on them, because it gums up their shit. So, yeah, a bit irksome.

Its not a "recycling symbol" its a Resin Identification Code [1]. I Imagine the confusion is intentional. You can use it to assist with recycling if you know which types of plastics your town can handle and what the numbers correspond to. The mere fact the symbol exists is meaningless as far as recycling goes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resin_identification_code

Re: About Those Air Cushions in Amazon Packages

#234
post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The city just has to say "put all your soft plastics in a larger soft plastic bag for easier sorting at the other end" or "take your soft plastics to the supermarket and put them in the soft-plastics bin there". Do everything to make it easy at both ends.

There is an obvious irony to having to go to your supermarket to recycle the plastic bags you received by shopping online, i.e. by not having to go to your supermarket to do shopping...

Yes, and I did suggest an alternative.

Re: About Those Air Cushions in Amazon Packages

#235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The city just has to say "put all your soft plastics in a larger soft plastic bag for easier sorting at the other end" or "take your soft plastics to the supermarket and put them in the soft-plastics bin there". Do everything to make it easy at both ends.

Don't recyclers have to sort submissions anyway? It's expected that citizens will fail to completely adhere to recycling instructions and submissions must be sorted anyway.

It's more like

Don't recyclers have to sort submissions anyway? It's expected that citizens will "completely fail" to adhere to recycling instructions and submissions must be sorted anyway.

Re: About Those Air Cushions in Amazon Packages

#236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've rarely buy from NewEgg, so I don't know how their return policy works, but for Amazon, if I ordered a hard drive and it was DOA, I tell them and they send me a new one before I even ship the first one back. No RMA numbers, no warranty problems, no "it was fine when it shipped, so that's UPS' fault". A simple "defective or doesn't work" and a new one is shipped that day.

Sure, Amazon does make returns effortless. But there are two complications. First, DOA is not really a problem. Second, it seems that Amazon nukes accounts that return too much stuff. Or so I've read. So if you order many HDDs from Amazon, you're faced with many decisions about borderline poor packaging.

Sure their packaging could be better, but in my anecdotal evidence, it's generally enough. I've order dozens of "fragile" items from Amazon, including two hard drives and a graphics card, and none of them were DOA or showed any signs of damage. Regarding them nuking accounts, if you're returning so much that they nuke you, you're probably return an obscene amount.
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