“Why did they come in such a big box,” asks my 14-year-old daughter, Emma, who is hopeful she won’t need them – special dental flossers for kids who wear braces – beyond summer’s end. But she needs them now and none were available at my local grocery or two pharmacies, so, I had resorted to Amazon.
Two days later, a box big enough to hold a DVD player lands on our doorstep carrying two tiny packages of 24 flossers, the pair wrapped tightly together in more Amazon plastic.
The box measures 15.5 by 13 by 3.5 inches.
The flossers – made of nothing more than plastic and dental floss – neither breakable without serious intent, were not only tightly bound in an extra layer of Amazon wrap but then encased in five full feet of those air-filled plastic pillows, which I must admit beat the stuffing out of packing peanuts.
Some perspective: the box on one of my kitchen chairs.
A package of flossers on the same chair.
And next to an electric socket.
I don’t have a scale that could confirm this, but the packaging and the flossers seem to weigh about the same, which isn’t much.
Yes, I understand that a portion of the responsibility for this wastefulness lies with the customer, as this isn’t the first time that a purchase has arrived from Amazon with grotesquely disproportionate packaging. Had I tried a few more stores I probably would have found the flossers.
Nevertheless, it sure seems to me that a padded envelope could have gotten them to my house safe and sound.