This is what I heard from the living hall when my 9-year-old started taking off packaging of some small electronic items I received via post.
What I saw what he was unpacking, yes, you could reasonably say that it was over packaged.
While we started taking off packaging, it was a daring conversation about the fact that
– the world has long value chains
– an order placed needs to collect multiple items from different places
– it is designed to cut cost, so standardised. It is very likely that packaging selection is most likely automated
– the system is more likely highly over engineered in packaging selection, as the damage to packaging costs the supplier loss of loyalty (and of course bad reviews), in addition to shipping twice
– so safety factors built in at multiple places and every place is likely to have overdesign
1) combining items together
2) automated packaging selection, 3) complex or long route shipping
– adding to this is the fact that
materials are cheap and taken for granted, so overdesign and excess packaging is considered less costly than human intervention to trying to optimise it by reducing complexity by reducing materials.
And here we are culprits of a system that is designed to cater to our needs, in a way that we do not appreciate !
