Day 172 - What's In the Box?!

remote for scale

The amount of packaging used these days is crazy...

I received this parcel in the post today, and it's immediately reminiscent of the huge box from a few weeks ago (click and scroll down).   I know what's in there, and I know it's nowhere near the size of this box...not even close.

Sure enough, the box was very light, and upon opening proved to be mostly full of air;

lightbox

Can this really be a great way of doing this?   In this instance, it's a recycled cardboard box, made from the body of an ancestor box, so that's something.

But what about stuff from Amazon?  It comes in huge boxes, using large amounts of card that goes immediately to recycling...or at least, you kinda hope it does...

Then the taxpayer (that would be you, note) pays to have it collected, sorted, and reconstituted by whatever energy consuming process they use, to turn it back into cheap, light cardboard...which is then presumably sold back to large companies like Amazon for reuse.

At first glance, this might seem like a neutral, sustainable process...but it really isn't. 

From an environmental perspective, there's a lot of energy expended in each recycle of the box...from the fuel used by the refuse truck, to the food eaten by the refuse operatives...from the electricity, water and other resources used in the process of sorting the cardboard from the other recycling, pulping it and reconstituting it, to the energy used in transporting it back to the distributor for reuse.  None of that energy consumption is sustainable - it's only the cardboard itself that is restored...

But even that isn't sustainable - not every cardboard box makes it back to recycling...some will end up in landfill, or being burnt.  And I'd be amazed if there weren't losses in the recycling process itself, too.

So whilst the headline may shout

"ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY RECYCLED CARDBOARD",

it's really only relatively friendlier than not recycling the cardboard. 

Overall, it's a desperately wasteful process.

And from a financial perspective...well, Amazon et al can have simple processes that are easy and quick in terms of labour costs (which the corporation pays), through being wasteful of cardboard...which they can get reconstituted at your (the taxpayers) expense. 

This is known as externalisation, where a commercial entity pushes costs away onto other parties, thereby increasing its own profit margins...

• Dump your harmful waste in the river, and the Water Company customer (again, you!) will bear the cost of cleaning it up for reuse.
• Create vehicles that pollute the atmosphere, knowing the society (that is, you) will bear the cost of the damage caused to the health of any or all life in the ecological system.
• Overuse cardboard, knowing that council tax payers (that would be you) will recycle it for you. 

This is a natural thing for a corporation to do, given the way corporations are designed and run, and the rules (laws) of the environment within which they exist (society)...this is an inevitable effect of an overly capitalist system...

At some point, we have to start being a bit more sensible about the way we go about things...we seriously need a revolution of some kind - turn the world on its head! 

Anyway, to save Roob from the desperate stress of not knowing what's in the box, here it is:

feel the power

Probably wasn't worth the wait, was it?  Although to be fair, it's a proprietary power adapter, difficult (and expensive) to replace, and without which I have a useless piece of musical gear...

So it has been worth the wait to me...I just externalised a bit of the waiting onto you, dear reader...

You're welcome!

;-)