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Comment by hbarka | Hacker News Reader

Why hasn’t Amazon, Costco, or Walmart used their clout to effect a positive change? Have you seen all the plastic and unnecessary packaging in the goods they sell. The size of the packaging relative to the actual product is so ridiculous sometimes.

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Did you read the article? It says that "more than half of that waste comes from just five countries in East and Southeast Asia — China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam". All the companies you listed are irrelevant there.

These countries import waste from many other countries, including the US.

They should start thinking about producing enough waste for themselves if they're unable to get by without imports, this creates a huge dependency on the US and most developed countries are completely self-sufficient when it comes to waste production.

Well.. Walmart is a large chain of supermarkets in China, and Costco operate there too, so they're not entirely irrelevant (http://www.wal-martchina.com/english/walmart/index.htm). Fortunately China has like many countries moved to forcing shops to charge for plastic bags so plastic bag waste has gotten a lot less bad in China at least.

actually, I get all of amazon stuff in europe in cardboard boxes with paper fillings and thread+paper tape.

Is it a european thing? Have I just been incredibly lucky?

That's pretty common for Amazon-branded items. Everything else is up to the manufacturer.

It would be great if businesses decided to differentiate themselves from their competition by using biodegradable, environmentally friendly packaging. I wouldn't mind shopping with them instead, even at a slightly higher cost, just so that I as a consumer don't feel like I'm killing our marine life for no good reason.

I would pay more to not get styrofoam peanuts.

I once had a large garbage bag of them get caught by the wind and they blew all over the yard. It took a couple hours to pick them all up, as they'd dance away from my fingertips.

I found that it barely helps. You end up being In a minority of a minority. Low prices will trump environment friendliness or even convenience sometimes.

I routinely reply on Amazon's feedback that packaging was clearly excessive whenever I am given the change to do so. To receive a micro SD card in (1) a plastic container, inside a (2) cardboard container, inside an (3) A4 Amazon cardboard envelope is bordering criminal.

Cardboard is perfectly biodegradable to be fair.

True, at least the stuff that's not glossed up with bonded plastic coating.

Easy to DIY recycle at home, too. Makes good mulch for the garden, just flatten it out and lay it underneath whenever you put compost/soil down anywhere.

Not so sure about the packing tape that inevitably comes with it.

* chance

Costco probably uses the least packaging per unit of product of anybody, due to bulk packaging.

I was in Walmart last night and they had no bags. I asked, “have you stopped providing bags now?” Fully expecting the answer to be yes, BYO only now.

“No, we’ve run out of the paper bags. We’re switching to plastic bags tomorrow”

Seriously? Wow.

Stores should provide non plastic bags and give you a large discount for returning/reusing them.

Agreed.

But their latest option is going to be “reusable plastic bags”, which means stronger plastic bags, containing more plastic, which many customers will still treat as disposable.

I’m confused as to how that’s a step forward.

How fucking hard is it to use the trolley to move your goods to your car, and then into your cupboard? You managed to collect all the goods and get them to the register without any bags...

It's surely less convenient than paying for and using a cheap bag.

Also, it would work in the specific situation you're describing (driving up to the store, parking back close to your house), but it doesn't really help in a lot of other use cases, so it can't be a universal solution.

I’m with you in principle, but to answer that last question -- quite hard?

Getting the groceries into your car is easy, but the last step of carrying them into your kitchen is hard. Unless you take the trolley home.

Seems easy to make the bags expensive enough that consumers realize that they're supposed to be used multiple times.

> How fucking hard is it to use the trolley to move your goods to your car, and then into your cupboard?

Addressing the sibling comments on this:

I don't know if it's common elsewhere, but some supermarkets in the UK have hand-held self-scanners that you can use while you walk around the shop. You pick things up, scan them with the scanner and put them in your (reusable) bags that you brought. Once you've got everything you go to a separate till where everything you've scanned comes up and you pay and go. Your groceries are already bagged and that makes it lots easier to unload into the house at the other end.

I've noticed as a result that some shoppers turn up with much more substantial reusable bags than the normal 'bag for life' variety. Ones made from fabric that are constructed to stay open.

Waitrose also have a version as an app so you can use your phone to do the scanning: https://www.waitrose.com/home/about_waitrose/quick_check/qui...

The trouble with paper bags is that they don't biodegrade without oxygen, which is what happens when you bury paper under tons of other material in a land fill. So the paper and the plastic are both there 100 years later, but the paper takes up more space in the long run because it doesn't compress as small. Unfortunately there's no good answer here yet that I've seen.

what about biodegradable plastic bags?

In italy those have been the norm for many years. They actually seem to decay quite fast (i.e. you can't reuse them for too many times).

In Australia they banned single use bags and now most people bring their reusable ones back to the store to reuse.

> Why hasn’t Amazon, Costco, or Walmart used their clout to effect a positive change?

That question practically answers itself. It's all about the money, and "using their clout to effect a positive change" would be less profitable.

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