Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Shop on-line for the environment

TerraPass has an interesting article on Amazon.com and on-line shopping as it relates to the environment. The highlights:

Amazon is working with manufacturers to eliminate those irritating acrylic plastic cases and instead package products in boxes that can take a mailing label directly. The result for Amazon will be lower handling and packaging costs. The result for customers will be a more pleasing product experience. And the result for the environment will be less packaging waste.

and,
I was reminded of another advantage of scale: less inventory waste. Something like 35% of the books in a traditional bookstore end up remaindered — returned to the manufacturer, or recycled, or just thrown away. Large, centralized retailers can significantly reduce this waste through better inventory management.


Interesting - and intriguing. Can you imagine a Christmas or Hanukkah without those damned plastic boxes and twist ties that take an hour to unwrap? I can, and it's all good.

Oh, also from TerraPass, this quote attributed to Obama:
The debates unnerved both candidates. When he was preparing for them during the Democratic primaries, Obama was recorded saying, "I don't consider this to be a good format for me, which makes me more cautious. I often find myself trapped by the questions and thinking to myself, 'You know, this is a stupid question, but let me … answer it.' So when Brian Williams is asking me about what's a personal thing that you've done [that's green], and I say, you know, 'Well, I planted a bunch of trees.' And he says, 'I'm talking about personal.' What I'm thinking in my head is, 'Well, the truth is, Brian, we can't solve global warming because I f---ing changed light bulbs in my house. It's because of something collective'."


As some of my on-line Obama-Mama friends would say, "Swoon!"

2 comments:

Lisa Snider said...

Okay, I love him even more now that I know he hurls the f-word!

GiGi said...

Exactly!!!!!