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Saturday, September 2, 2006

When the Environment is the Enemy: Sears

The other day the mail carrier dropped off a 19″ x 16″ padded plastic envelope. The return address said “Sears”, but I couldn’t think of anything I’d recently ordered from them.

one envelope

I opened it up and discovered that it contained four, 14″ x 12″ padded plastic envelopes.

one envelope

After opening the first envelope, I remembered that weeks earlier I’d ordered the service and install manuals for the stove that was already in the house when we moved in.

one envelope

One of the envelopes contained only a single sheet of paper: a schematic for the stove.

At this point I’m pretty peeved. I’ve got five envelopes made of plastic that I can’t recycle or reuse.

Then I got to noticing that the stack of paper I had was pretty light, possibly lighter than the weight of the packaging itself. I don’t know what the postage charge was, but the thought of paying to have stuff shipped to me that I can’t use or recycle really makes me cranky.

So I broke out the postal scale.

Stove documentation, 6.5oz:
one envelope

Packaging, 7.5oz:
one envelope

That’s 7.5 oz of plastic mailers to protect 6.5 oz of paper. I paid twice the postage for unnecessary packaging that will end up in some landfill.

Thanks, Sears!

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posted by jet at 16:40  

2 Comments »

  1. OMG. We have truly gone mad as a species.

    Comment by Ann — 2006/09/02 @ 19:12

  2. You should complain to sears about it… back when I worked there their motto was “the customer is always right” even when the customer used the whole bottle except a thimbleful and wants to return it for a full refund, and that the particular customer does it repeatedly.

    So they’ll probably listen, or at least give you a refund. But that is fucked up. Perhaps it’s time to start a campaign of overpacking offenders. I remember when jamie ordered a new license for irix, which he downloaded the software, but they mailed him a single piece of paper in a box full of bubble wrap. Not a small box either.

    Comment by raven — 2006/09/09 @ 18:44

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