Stupid Green Ideas: Dell's Tree-Saving Boxes...

A friend of mine recently had a package delivered to him that looked as though it had been kicked around as a practice ball for England's upcoming stab at the World Cup. The tarnished box came from Dell, one of the world's largest computer and hardware manufacturers in the world. My friend tossed me the box and told me to take a look at the label attached on the side. Expecting to see one of the typical "we are sorry about the condition of the package, it was damaged during travel", I was very surprised to instead see the words inscribed, "We apologize for the condition of this package. Dell is reusing packaging to save trees."

As my friend said in a more polite fashion, what a load of bull. I admire the desire to try and "green" itself, but this is pushing it. My friend rightly believes that they are not reusing the boxes for environmental reasons, but rather to save money. They should admit it, rather than trying to greenwash consumers. It's similar to a case where I tell my friends that I won't wash the dishes for a week because cleaning them in bulk is more efficient than in small spurts and less water and soap will be used. Regardless of whether or not there is any truth to that statement, we all know that the real reason is that I'm just lazy.

Don't pretend to be something you're not. You like like an idiot, and worse, you give the environmental movement a bad name.

But he was a little more sympathetic to the actual state of the box than I was. Granted, it was still structurally sound and the product inside was protected with bubble wrap. But when I saw the box, the first thing that I thought was how bad Dell looked. Now I realize that we live in a consumer culture where aesthetically pleasing packaging is an environmental folly and that we shouldn't focus so much on the appearance of packaging, but there are ways to save money and/or be more environmentally friendly that won't make your packages -- Dell was built on packaged and mailed products -- look like junk. When someone sends me something by mail in a package, significant damage to the package indicates to me that at some point in the trip perhaps something else more important was damaged.

I do not know the packaging industry particularly well, nor do I pretend to understand the technology overly comprehensively, but I'm sure there are substitutes to reusing cardboard boxes that won't have a massive impact on the presentation of the packaging. Perhaps supply chain management could develop some innovative reusable box system or maybe the boxes could be compostable. Of course, Dell would unlikely go for any of those considering its true motive is probably financial.

But if I were Dell, I would look to make 'green' improvements in other facets of my business that don't make the average consumer wonder whether having them send something by mail is a liability to the product. But most of all, as my friend pointed out, don't pretend to do something for environmental reasons if that isn't your main intention.