
No more cardboard boxes? 3M invents an ingenious new way to ship products - JSeymourATL
https://www.fastcompany.com/90382264/no-more-cardboard-boxes-3m-invents-an-ingenious-new-way-to-ship-products
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branchan
"Compared to cardboard boxes, which can be easily recycled, that’s a hassle
most consumers likely won’t bother with. Kent recognizes this is a problem"

Is this even true??

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duskwuff
What part? That cardboard can be easily recycled (true), that most consumers
probably won't bother with a recycling process that isn't curbside (seems
likely), or that the company representative recognizes that the difficulty of
recycling their product is a problem (I'll take FC's word for it)?

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borghives
"The roll is made out of three layers of different plastic"

So it's basically Paper vs Plastic. What is bad about the cardboard boxes that
these thing replaces?

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joezydeco
Are you asking what is bad about the cardboard, or what is bad about the box?

Nothing is wrong with the cardboard except weight. Nothing is bad about the
box except for the remainder of unused space that is in almost every package
(and filled with more expensive paper or inflated filler)

For a shipper, minimizing weight and wasted space is a double win. This
product has nothing to do with what the consumer wants.

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kardos
More plastic? We should be getting away from plastics....

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m-p-3
Especially single-use..

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lysium
I find that interesting. I’m wondering how that opening actually works. Aren’t
the layers glued together?

Also, what about sending the item back? You’ll need a new wrap.

Today, I expect products to be environment-friendly. We should not create more
plastic to fill our only planet.

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okcando
Recyclable but probably only once into various second-generation foams and
fillers. Then on to be land filler.

Lowering emissions is just a side-effect that might apply to any individual
shipment but could easily be undone by the increased number of shipments
enabled by lowering costs. The calculations that they haven't done yet really
ought to have been done before making any environmental or economic claims,
including accounting for the wisdom of replacing biodegradable and renewable
paper products with another disposable application for a non-renewable
resource.

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x2f10
Doesn't a cardboard box also provide protection? Often, the box includes the
product as well as packaging material. In the absence of material, doesn't the
air help it a bit (ala a potato chip bag)?

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rgacote
Aside from the plastics vs. paper issue, how do you pack these things into a
shipping container or trailer? Can you imagine the logistics of every order
Amazon packs being a (nearly) unique size?

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MisterTea
Interesting idea but it doesn't address the plastics problem. I can't stand
those giant plastic bubble wrap envelopes amazon and others seem to love
using. You can't easily reuse them and they cant be placed in plastics
recycling (though they can be recycled with other plastic bags at supermarkets
or recycling locations). At least I can find other uses for cardboard and have
often recycled boxes for storage or as raw materials for a project.

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Scoundreller
I save ‘em and re-use them on EBay sales.

I wish amazon better consolidated its shipments. Most of the time I don’t care
for 2 day shipping and would rather get everything together in 1 box every
couple weeks.

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eyesee
Amazon offers to ship on your "Amazon Day", which appears to consolidate all
your weekly deliveries on a day of your choice.

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simonebrunozzi
My feeling about this? A much more polluting option, that nevertheless will be
adopted because it's more convenient than card boxes. Poor Earth.

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david-gpu
How is this better than bubble-wrap envelopes? It seems to suit the same use
cases.

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yellowapple
It's easier to trim it to size, meaning better space efficiency and less
wasted packing material without having to buy a bunch of different envelope
sizes.

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childintime
Needs a cardboard version.

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yellowapple
Yeah, if they could replace one or more of those layers with paper (and/or use
one of the various biodegradable plastics available nowadays), it'd be a
universal win on pretty much every metric except maybe cost (though there's no
way paper's expensive enough to make a significant difference in this case).

