Ponderables: Why Must Amazon Ship Air All Over The United States of America?

Reader Marc would like Amazon to stop shipping bubbles of air all over the country. He ordered two items that would have been fine to ship in an envelope — but instead he got the usual large box with several air bubbles. This makes Marc mad.

Marc says:

They could have double padded-enveloped the items and they would have been better protected than shifting around in that huge box, under those plastic air pillows (What the heck is up with those air pillows anyways? They don’t do jack). How about getting one of those huge brains over there on the task of figuring out how much more gasoline/diesel and packaging material is wasted because Amazon insists on shipping air around the country for no good reason at all. I am talking about how much is wasted because additional trucks and delivery drivers are needed to transport boxes of air all around the country.

Maybe if they are called out a little more on the environmental damage and waste they are causing, some numb-skull at Amazon should be able to grasp that they are not making any sense at all. No matter what, they need to be made aware that anything but sending things in appropriate packaging is a dumb excuse!

It is kind of sad to think of all the air that Amazon is shipping, and here at Consumerist we get tons of complaints about it — far too many to post them all.

What do you think? Is this a serious problem?

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