More Trash Talk
Published March 18, 2010 | 
And the truck comes by on Friday, and carts it all away.
And a thousand trucks just like it are converging on the bay. Oh…..
Garbage, garbage, garbage….
We’re filling up our seas with garbage (garbage, garbage…)
What will we do when there’s no place left to put all the garbage (garbage, garbage……)
– sesame street
And speaking of disposable, I received an email from Tacoma, WA when reader from a paddleshop there read my post about Starbuck’s wasteful packaging at the Sheraton Hotel in Madison. Ken Campbell told me this pile (see the picture) came from a delivery of 30 mostly plastic kayaks. You can read his thoughts on waste here. You may notice the Necky logos, but we don’t mean to pick on Necky specifically. There’s plenty of trash to go around. The problem is getting more companies in our “green” industry to be green behind the shop as well as on the show floor.
I was talking to a paddle maker last evening about packaging as well. He made some great points about simply protecting the boat or the paddle so you don’t waste more packaging, time, money and of course resources to re-send broken parts or damaged boats. A totally valid point. Still, there must be a better way than the mountains of plastic and cardboard we’re using now.
Anyway, It’s worth a conversation don’t cha think?
*photo used by permission. Thank you!
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4 Responses to More Trash Talk
I’ve seen a few boats destroyed because of improper packaging and shipping. So, although I agree with the sentiment and I would love to see the use of greener packaging, I disagree that it’s wasteful. Consumers demand that the kayaks they buy are scratch-free when they leave the store. Even with the plastic and bubble wrap, which may be seen as wasteful, it’s hard to achieve that result. If the bubble wrap and plastic helps to achieve that result, then, in my opinion, it’s not wasteful. (Note: we post an ad on the community BBS giving away the bubble wrap, so ours gets reused.)
When consumers agree to accept minor shipping scratches without asking for $50 to $100 discounts, then you’ll see the packaging start to go away.
Hi Bryan,
Yeah, that’s what I noted in the second paragraph. Thing is, if the product is not reused as you are doing to your credit, then while it provided some short benefit it still ends up in landfills. The obvious goal is to package properly with 100%, not just reusable in principle, but actually reused materials.
Shame on this shop. Cardboard is totally recyclable and #2 and #4 plastic are pretty easily recyclable in many areas of the country (don’t know if Necky was using that kind of plastic in this instance, but many of my mail order packages are arriving with the inflated plastic packaging that is marked with a #4 and can be recycled). “Native” kayaks was transporting kayaks in a reusable fabric sleeve. Stores got some sort of credit if they returned the sleeves to Native for reuse. Not being in retail any longer, I can’t say for certain if that program is still in effect.
Sherri…
Whatever could be recycled, was recycled. (There were some things that could not be, like the styrofoam blocks, but most of it ended up in the appropriate bin.) That wasn’t the issue that I had with it; I question the value of putting this much packaging into the system in the first place. Recycling is dandy, and we do it as a matter of course, but it doesn’t address the larger question about how much plastic we should be using in the first place.
And Bryan, I know you’re right too, about customer demand. I just think we should take another look at alternate packaging methods, options for getting good results that don’t require so much waste.