Today was a day for dealing with details. Getting all the last bits together to send the taxes to the accountant. Burning some new cd's for the car. Oh yeah, and recycling. Shredding mail that has any kind of personal references, cutting up the cardboard boxes that all my pump supplies come in, as well as cleaning out my supply drawer of all the extraneous packaging that comes with all my supplies. Boxes, brochures, instructions. In each and every box, tons of paper that I never read, that has to be gathered up and recycled. What an absolute waste of trees, time and money. I get that there are probably legal reasons for the manufacturer to do this, but please, there has to be a better way. It's depressing enough to throw away a pile of used sets every 3 days, of which I'm more willing to live with, since I need to do it to live. But the rest of this stuff seems purely wasteful. If you've read the stuff once, it's unlikely you ever need to see another brochure again. They could send a package with all the stuff they want us to read when we first sign up for supplies. Don't pack it in the box every time (imagine how much paper alone would be saved when you multiple the thousands of boxes that are sent out every year). And don't even print the box (I don't need happy, smiling people on a box I rip open to get a new set from). Heck, do they even need to send the supplies in a box in the first place? I don't know the answer but it's at least an interesting design question to pose. These are all design questions that I'm not sure I'd have even noticed, if it wasn't for the sheer volume of packaging I have to deal with by wearing a pump. And though they are just design questions in the end, they do feel like ones worthy of consideration nonetheless. Because really, at this point in time, I think I've had enough pump brochures to last a lifetime.
There really is a lot of it isn't there!!
I wonder how much of the packaging is so that they don't get sued by opportunistic people looking for a shortcut?
Posted by: Scott K. Johnson | February 15, 2007 at 06:50 PM