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Comment by jollybean | Hacker News Reader

The world changed quite a lot due to standardized shipping containers. It was a mess before that.

I really do think the same could be applied to shipping packaging.

There are 12 sized boxes and that's that. They need to be stacked a certain way.

Or maybe a bit of flex here and there for some things.

Nobody really has the wherewithal or power to do that, but you know ... Xi could. I can see that being something China imposes, and then it's a standard that naturally gets exported.

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Amazon basically does this, I think? As a consumer, I hate it, because I end up with a huge box and loads of useless paper whenever something isn't the right aspect ratio for one of the standard boxes.

Obviously for distribution of stock you could probably be smarter about it and waste less space/cardboard since you've probably got lots of each size of item.

Yes I detest that. For distribution it would work.

For end-consumer shipping, they should frankly have boxes that 'fit' perfectly.

Amazon should have a 'box maker machine' that makes all the dam boxes on the spot as needed from cardboard.

Or forget boxes, how about a really light mesh?

They pretty much do this in some cases, they use boxes like this[0] which fit their contents based on where they are taped.

[0] https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B094DL2GQ6

I worked for Amazon in sustainability for some time. "Fitting" 'perfectly' requires literally billions of shape combinations, because multiple items ship in one box. I question whether it would save any holistic measure of energy/emissions/waste to solve that problem to any measure of 'perfectly'.

The work Amazon has done to change box types, switch to bags, etc., has reduced waste considerably per package, though I suspect the absolute amount of waste has continued to increase with business growth.

Amazon has so many though [0] that I don't really think that's directly why that happens - I'd assume it's just laze (whether human or algorithmic!) in finding the optimal box, and going with one that's obviously big enough, to hand, or whatever.

[0] - approx 90 in Japan in 2016 - https://dailyportalz.jp/kiji/170303198940 (thought that was fun, submitted here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29746745)

I think some of the time for this, is they have X of common standard sized box, and Y of less common smaller/differently shaped box, and eventually they run out of Y sized box, so they go down the list of close matches until they find a box in stock at that particular packing station. I've ordered the same thing (baby formula premix ready to drink, fairly large, fairly heavy) in sets of two for several months and it's been shipped at least four different ways that I can remember; I doubt the bin packing algorithm is changing that drastically from week to week.

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