"Eco" own goal
15 October 2008 | Matt Perdeaux | Business, Culture
I've just taken delivery of my latest bunch of stuff from Amazon, and I can't help but feel a bit irked with the mangled way that environmental responsibility is used in marketing nowadays.
Last week, I decided I needed some earphones that blocked out a bit more external noise than the ear buds that came with my iPod. A swift scoot through Amazon found some reasonable-looking Sennheisers. They are described as an "Eco" product because the packaging is 100% recyclable, and when they arrived, they were in a nice old-fashioned brown cardboard box with the product contained within a clever set of punched cardboard leaves. All well and good, gives you a nice warm glow as you toss the packaging into the recycle bin, etc.
However, while I was there, I thought I would stock up on a few seasons of "The Wire". So my order was two DVDs and one pair of "Eco" headphones. All to be sent from Amazon's Jersey warehouse. I didn't tick the "fast delivery" option. Yet they were all sent in separate packages, on the same day, and all arrived, in separate packages, two days later. What's the point of cutting down on product packaging if you're going to send everything individually? I applaud the initial effort, but didn't Amazon used to be able to put more than one thing in each box?
