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I've always wondered if, for example, Amazon, could be using reusable totes instead of cardboard. I get that they'd have to transport them back and they have weight, but they deliver regularly enough to my house that it seems doable now - maybe just for monthly things like subscribe and save.

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It's extremely time consuming to collect bags, stage bags at the fcs, and the bags have to be cleaned between uses which would negate any environmental savings.

They tried to do that with Amazon Fresh. Their delivery folks didn't pick up the bags when they were left out, though, even when Amazon said they would.

The failure of the employee doomed the policy. There's no way to defend against that

But why? Recently had one of those amzn pull baskets (for small packages) left forgotten on our street. Told next delivery peeps several times, they wouldn’t take it.

Exception handling is usually a specific job in logistics, often titled 'problem solve' or similar. The people doing delivery routes only have the time/information/procedures in place to do their assigned tasks. They probably don't have the time, space, or information to determine what to do with that basket. It was someone else's job assignment.

I know that “computer” used to be a profession. But who would have thought “exception handler” was one, too?

"Pay delivery people a wage that makes them care" is an option.

Doubtful. It's just easier to not do it and take the new wages. You'd have to eliminate everyone, and start over. Doubtful performance reviews would motivate them either with/without said raise.

Just have a machine back at the Amazon pickup point that farts out quarters when given boxes, suddenly all the employees will be picking them up.

This is the reason nobody ever does any of the work they're paid to do. Easier not to, right?

When the precedent has been established as doing less than expected and no negative ramifications, it is difficult to get those same employees to change. If you have good employees already, then that's the norm.

I've had good and bad experiences with Amazon delivery. I have no idea if those good/bad experiences are from 3rd party people hired by Amazon or if they are Amazon employees. Doesn't matter to the end user though. Just like in any large organization, there will always be lower performing workers. When you're so desperate that you cannot eliminate these workers, then there is no incentive to change. Just like other uniform wearing services, it's the "bad apples" that get all of the attention, and they are probably vastly out numbered by the good apples. That's just not how society works by focusing on the good when there's so much more traction by beating on the negatives (just look at the socials and their entire core functionality).

Amazon logistics, at least in my area, pays significantly more than competitors. They had to, in order to accomplish the insane growth they've undergone over recent years. However, they've also had to reduce their hiring standards to somewhere around "can you fog a mirror".

It is really not possible to understate how insane their hiring growth is. I think the only organizations in history to grow their headcount faster are militaries under periods of conscription. And currently, the only two organizations with a larger total headcount... are the worlds' two largest militaries.

Here in my area, they pay about the same as UPS or FedEx (UPS also does a lot of the Amazon delivery).

And there remain more ways to incentivize--like I would, genuinely, pay more on my Prime subscription if the delivery folks would pay attention both to the note in my account and the sign on the door to deliver to the back of my house instead of placing them in the front. In fact the status quo is probably worse, because I have to check both because some deliveries end up at the back (and did before there was a sign, even!).

I consider myself lucky that the package is delivered to anywhere on my property. I have found them lying in the driveway, seemingly thrown from the vehicle as it passed by. It's not all that uncommon to have to hunt down missing packages at the neighbor's houses.

I don't pay for Prime because when I did, nothing improved.

Delivery predictability (this close to a major hub, a lot of stuff is overnight and everything is two-day shipping) and the occasional television show (one very other week or so) is why I keep paying for Prime. Also, they gave me GrubHub+ for a year as part of it, so hey.

My wife’s company had an issue where a courier was delivering packages to a garbage can at the front door.

Deliver as is “place the MacBook in the bin”

That's an extra service provided free of charge called "Hide the item from porch pirates".

Given amazon's mission is essentially the same as the military, that's not surprising. Deliver goods anywhere in the world in short notice and massive throughput.

The people shooting at the end just adds another 8% to headcount.

Seems ripe for use in a sci-fi: "Today just two armies dominate the world, Amazon and Walmart. Some historians claim they started out as retail services, but this is widely debated says historian Dan Wells, from the University of US-West1."

I see devs online making $200k brag about working 4 hours a week and gaming and sleeping on the clock.

"Paying enough to care" isn't a thing. It doesn't exist.

You still need accountability. Where’s the manager?

A company the size of Amazon, you have to ask a follow up of "which one?"

The way to do it would be a deposit-style setup. Each basket is charged to you as a dollar, and you return it and get the dollar back, or something.

But the reality is cardboard is too cheap and easy to use - even major companies like Walmart use cardboard boxes (that do have a "please return this, it costed us a dollar" on it) instead of plastic or metal.

When Amazon fresh started out they had these insulated reusable heavy dusty bagsYou were supposed to return the bag with your next order. Eventually they stopped using the heavy duty insulated bags and just used cardboard with the small insulated bubble wrap inside. A similar delivery service would collect the bubble wrap but wouldn’t take the boxes. I often had clean boxes I wish they have taken also. I currently use a service that drops all the food off in a big metal box we leave on the porch: nothing to exchange or dispose of. I like this last arrangement the best, but I understand why that doesn’t scale very well and isn’t practiced by all services delivering perishable goods.

Is cotton produftion less intensive than cardboard?

OP is maybe talking about a plastic tote, but what really matters is how many times you can reuse it. I don't know about cardboard, but iirc for the plastic vs. canvas bag comparison I believe the break-even is on the order of 20 uses to 1. i.e. if you can use the canvas bag 20 times more than the plastic bag before discarding it, the canvas bag is less resource intensive.

It's much much much worse than that. Almost 3 orders of magnitude.

https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2020/04/30/plastic-paper-c...

" In addition, they are difficult to recycle since textile recycling in the U.S. is limited—only 15.2 percent of all textiles were recycled in 2017. As a result, a cotton bag needs to be used 7,100 times to equal the environmental profile of a plastic bag."

Looking around it seems estimates vary by a fair bit, and the one you cite is on the high end. Other estimates are in the low hundreds, which is a very attainable number of reuses. But it does seem my memory was unrealistically low. Also an aspect that is not considered in these studies is that canvas bags generally carry more stuff per bag than single use plastic ones, so taking 2 canvas bags to the grocery store can save 6 or 8 plastic bags.

The difference seems to be how far down the rabbithole you go - are you only tracking the energy to make/ship/(hopefully recycle) the bag or, as the study I linked does, goes all the way back to the plant in the field. Cotton is very water intensive.

Yes, I was thinking about what I used to unload when I unloaded trucks for a retailer [1]. But maybe not so fancy - something solid an re-usable.

[1] e.g. https://reusabletrans.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads... (not the best link, but what I could find doing a quick search)

Edit: I just realized that the word "tote" could have meant a bag of some sort. When I used to unload them everyone was calling them "totes", as in "unload that tote" and I hadn't thought about the word use until now. Though an image search for "totes" is mostly what I'm talking about: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=totes&t=ffab&iar=images&iax=images...

I'd be shocked if it was. Cotton production isn't very green in any of its forms.

Seem like one could devise a system where they don't have to make the full circuit each time: Give each one a unique QR code. If you need a box, query by dimensions and pay to have the nearest one shipped to you. If it happens to be in the house across the street, shipping will probably be cheap--or you can walk over and get it.

There’s a German startup called LivingPackets. They advertised heavily on YouTube to attract investors. “Imagine you had invested in one of the big internet companies” was one of their lines. I think the BaFin stepped in (federal agency for regulation of the finance sector). Don’t know if they still exist.

Reusable totes don’t really stack.

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