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Comment by claytoneast | Hacker News Reader

The e-ink display part triggers thoughts of an Amazon of the future that uses entirely reusable boxes to ship things to consumers. Hard plastic containers w/ e-ink labels. Boom, no more millions (billions? trillions?) of cardboard/plastic boxes used to enclose packages. Still millions/billions/trillions of boxes/plastic packaging for the items themselves, but at least the transit envelope would be reusable.

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At one point, Amazon was arranging pickups of the boxes if you filled them with charitable donations (clothing?). Probably not 1 for 1, but it’s something.

They tried reusable plastic boxes for Amazon stuff in Seattle years ago. It was a pretty colossal failure. People just kept the plastic boxes and used them for stuff around the house.

"Bill the people who keep the plastic boxes," is the oft-heard refrain!

What if they're stolen off your porch due to living in a not-great neighborhood? You still owe?

Bill upfront and credit back on return. Amazon shouldn't be responsible for the stealing happening in your neighbourhood.

They often shoulder that responsibility to reduce friction, and I think it works net-positive in their favor.

Billing the customer and then penalizing them for being a victim of theft introduces so much friction and frustration.

That is true and besides the point which is that they are not responsible.

It'll happen eventually... just attach wheels and some AI like this company: https://www.starship.xyz/

That's a cool idea. I wonder how many re-uses a box like that would take to make it cost effective over the same amount of cardboard. Should be feasible I'd think.

If the cost to return the box is more than a cardboard box, its not feasible.

Not necessarily. If the box costs 10 times as much, but they come up with a way to use the box 12 times, it was worth it.

That won't work if the recipient doesn't have a need to mail something back, but for a use case where you expected most boxes would be shipped back (maybe a phone repair company?), it could absolutely make sense.

The post you're saying "not necessarily" to has nothing to do with the cost of the box itself. If returning it costs too much, the box could be free and you'd lose money.

Just make it up in volume! ;)

A lot of Amazon users get daily/weekly drop offs, and increasingly via Amazon’s own logistics.

Seems fairly trivial to have those drivers pick up last week’s carriers when they drop off this one’s.

They did that with Amazon Fresh, and (at least from my perspective of several years ago) I think the asymmetry between # of packages and frequency of delivery didn't work out for them that well. We'd end up holding onto a stack of 4-5 crates for a week or so, which means Amazon would have to float probably a ton of these across their customers. That's all a guess though, but these days we get deliveries in plastic/paper bags, no reusable containers, so something must not have worked out.

That said, grocery delivery is much more "bursty" than package delivery.

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