Finally!

[trixtah]

Finally got my router. It would have arrived on Monday, but I had fun and games trying to intersect with the courier. No mention of sending the old one back to Belkin, and this router is about two models newer than my current one. w00t! But check out the bloody packaging here! That's right, that's only two hunks of paper stuck around the sides of the box, and the outer box is about twice as large as the one with the device in it. That leaves 4 sides that are only protected by the device box itself - and the packaging in that is quite adequate, both for compression and crush resistance - so why bother with the outer box? Beats me. Other than creating more waste in the world. 9/10 for Belkin customer service, but only 2/10 for packaging skillz (at least the cardboard and paper is recyclable). Still, yay connectivity tonight.

Comments

[damned-colonial.livejournal.com]

I dunno. It's sort of the mentality of "well, we can use as much as we want, because it's recyclable!" But recycling is generally lossy, both in quality of output (eg you can make cardboard boxes from office paper, but not vice versa) as well as the energy taken to do it. "Recyclable" puts a sort of green veneer on things that, half the time, shouldn't have been used in the first place.

(Note: this is a criticism of your router providers, not you!)

[trixtah.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah, I see what you're getting at; there's always a cost, as you say. It's a shame how often people forget the first two components of the "reduce, reuse, recycle" tag. And yep, those guys obviously don't have a clue.

The Guardian had some fun with a suggestion (http://www.guardian.co.uk/supermarkets/story/0,,1948062,00.html) from the Minister of the environment in the UK to dump excess packaging at the supermarket (following on from an announcement that supermarkets will be "encouraged" to reduce their packaging), but I don't know if that strategy will get the buggers following along with the "reduce" part very quickly. :-)