OT ish. Packaging

[The Medway Handyman]

Last week I install a light fitting for a customer, hideous thing in my opinion, but there you are.

It had three arms, with glass droplets attached, linked by chains of droplets. It came in a box. Inside the box was a plastic bag. Inside that was another bag with 18 glass droplets, each in its own bag. In another bag were three droplet chains, each in their own bags and three candle like decorative tubes, each in their own bags.

1 box and 27 plastic bags!

Next day I put up some wooden curtain poles. Each shrink wrapped. Removing the shrink wrap revealed the brackets, both shrink wrapped, the finials, both shrink wrapped, the curtain rings (you've guessed it), another bag with the screws and finally the pole itself was shrink wrapped.

Some days I swear I spend more time unwrapping stuff than I do installing it. No wonder there's an oil crisis!

[Andy Burns]

[Andy Bennett]

[Lobster]

On 22 Feb 2015, The Medway Handyman grunted:

Last week I ordered a 2nd-hand laptop from an online supplier, and after some discussion agreed that I would receive an installation disk of the operating systen as well - ie ordered under separate cover.

The laptop arrived in a reasonably laptop-sized parcel, but the second delivery was a parcel about 18"x18"x12"...far bigger than the laptop delivery. WTF I thought, unwrapping it: it turned out to be a single CD, not even in a jewel case, wrapped round and round with a length of bubble wrap about 18" by 15' long! Bizarre.

[michael adams]

A lot of this stuff will probably be bagged up individually as it comes off the machine and will go into big hoppers where the cheap plastic bag will save on damage. As the various models may have different numbers of droplets the assembler will pull out the required number of droplets for a particular order and put them into another bag. Same with the chains. The packaging saves on damage as the components are shuttled around. Around the country or around the factory.

Same again.

A bigger problem I find , especially where there's lots of cardboard and foam involved is getting rid of the stuff.

But then again at least be thankful that there's no bits missing.

michael adams

...

[Huge]

I bought 50 picture pins from eBay which arrived in a poly bag inside a cardboard box about the size of an A4 paperback book.

[John Rumm]

Are we still talking about the customer ;-)

[Adrian]

Yep, a very small amount of plastic packaging certainly explains why the price of oil has soared so high recently...

[spuorgelgoog]

3 arms is possibly better than 50 Shades :-)

Owain

[Brian Gaff]

Yup, I know. Ram sticks in bulk. 120 of them. An unexpectedly large cardboard box arrives. Inside is a plastic bag, welded shut. This is around some kind of poly foam in two halved s. Open that and sticks are all vertical, nicely spaced apart, each in a tiny plastic bag made of the su tuff you get around sweets that crackles when you crunch it. Ah I thought, maybe its anti static? No these little things stick to me, the stick the packaging everything. So why so much packaging and space wasting for something really not that fragile?

Brian

[Jonathan]

A few years ago I bought a masonry drill from Screwfix and it came in cardboard box which you could have got a case of wine into.

Jonathan

[Huge]

Oh, yes! I'd forgotten about Screwfix. I rarely get stuff delivered from them any more since a counter opened nearby. I've had 2 packs of screws and some Evostick come in a box the same size as those used for copier paper.

[PeterC]

Not only a box much too big but the Lost Art Of Packing Properly. Something that wasn't delicate or fragile but perhaps vulnerable to sharpish impact - corner of a kerb, say. Lots of padding on top and around, just the carton below. Oh, had the same with 2 HDDs - no protection below.

[polygonum]

Both licence keys and warranty certificates (i.e. only small pieces of card/paper), in a box something like described above - maybe 18 x 15 x

1. The useful contents could have been sent in a single SMS.