Amazon: No more huge boxes for itsy-bitsy items
AMAZON has vowed to change its ways after years of being shamed for using huge packages to deliver small items.
Following criticism from customers and environmental campaigners, the online retail giant is trialling new technology that selects more sensible delivery boxes.
The worst offences have included a book wrapped in 30ft of packaging paper, and a lipstick sent in a box the size of a computer.
The website has responded to accusations it is creating a ‘cardboard crisis’ by announcing it is testing a brand new packaging system.
Amazon bosses hope the technology, called Box on Demand, will ensure items are sent in parcels matching their dimensions.
The software could be rolled out across Europe in 12 months, but is only in the pilot stage and could take as long as 20 months to have any impact on deliveries.
Environmental campaigners last night said Amazon should be ‘congratulated’ for the move, but said they ‘must follow through on it’ and other retailers should follow suit.
Richard McIlwain, of Keep Britain Tidy, said: ‘Amazon definitely need to resolve their packaging because there are clearly examples where they are over-packaging.’
He cited a ‘crazy’ example of notebooks arriving in a ‘box the size of Mars’ and surrounded by polystyrene balls.
‘They are the biggest online retailer, therefore anything they can do to tackle over-packaging should be congratulated,’ he added. ‘But they are not the only ones, let’s see others follow suit.’
Amazon, which sends out more parcels than any other online retailer, has faced years of complaints from customers about excessive packaging. In 2008 it signed up to the Frustration-Free Packaging initiative in a bid to cut down on waste, yet the issue remains unresolved.
The Amazon website also boasts that its current packing technology, called CubiScan, ‘determines the “right-sized” box for any given item to be shipped to a customer’. But the machine, which weighs and scans products before selecting one of 17 package types, has proved to be far from foolproof.
The new box-fitting software is thought to use a more extensive range of boxes, and the Box on Demand website claims the ‘machinery creates the perfect packaging for your products, reducing the empty space (air) in each shipment’.
Amazon revealed plans for the pilot scheme to celebrity chef and waste campaigner Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, who confronted it about its ‘cardboard crisis’ as part of his BBC show War on Waste, which returns next Thursday.
The 51-year-old was granted rare access to one of its UK distribution centres and was given a demonstration of the packaging process, but he identified significant flaws.
In the documentary, the CubiScan technology is shown selecting a large box for a small white tub, but Fearnley-Whittingstall proves that it could fit neatly in a smaller box.
Nicola Sweeney, the regional operations director at the Swansea base, said that if the box is ‘too flush’ against the item then it is ‘at risk of getting damaged’. And Amazon’s global head of sustainability, Kara Hurst, insisted that ‘in the majority of cases we are getting it right’.
Yet, after being shown damning videos and photos from customers, including one of an individual necklace bead in a large box, she conceded: ‘It is one of the things we have to get better at.’
Fearnley-Whittingstall said: ‘Kara tells me that Box on Demand makes packaging to the specific dimensions of a product, meaning less wasted cardboard and fewer vehicles needed to make deliveries. Sounds great.’
Earlier this year the River Cottage chef launched a campaign about coffee cups, after discovering that only a tiny fraction of the 2.5 billion cups that are thrown away each year are recycled.
He discovered that the polyethylene lining used on most cardboard cups means they cannot be processed in recycling plants.
And last year, 300,000 signed a petition he set up calling for supermarkets to relax their cosmetic standards on fruit and vegetables.
Following his ‘wonky veg’ campaign, several major supermarkets now stock discoloured and misshapen food in special lines such as Tesco’s ‘perfectly imperfect parsnips’ and Waitrose’s ‘a little less than perfect carrots’.
‘We have to get better’