The pandemic has upended the relationship between people and e-commerce. The data on online purchases has literally gone crazy. Side effects? Many. One, very negative, concerns the proliferation of packaging waste ending up in landfill. And thetechnology it is already what it is.
Cardboard packaging has its advantages, but it still constitutes a form of waste, not always easy to recycle. LivingPackets, a Berlin-based brand, has devised an ingenious solution to minimize the waste associated with shipping.
The company has designed an alternative to cardboard boxes that is simply called “The Box”. Four years of development and presentation at the recent CES20. The Box is a sustainable alternative for the e-commerce sector, and can be reused up to 1000 times. In contrast, cardboard packaging has only one life: from the point of packaging to the point of delivery. Stop. If the municipality of the place of delivery recycles, the cardboard packaging is given a new life. If you don't recycle, cardboard packaging goes to waste and harms the environment. In addition to the sustainability aspect, The Box is designed to be versatile and take the form of a large number of goods. It can even “flatten” to carry important documents, or a laptop.
The Box: it starts in May
Late spring will see the mass production of this alternative to cardboard packaging. Not only reusability, however, is among the strings in The Box's bow. The 2.0 box is equipped with GPS to allow the sender/recipient to track the package in real time and at any point along the way. Just use its companion app on a smartphone. Simply place the object inside the box, close it, enter the destination and the integrated e-ink display will replace the paper label, with the classic data plus data updated in real time on the status of the shipment.
The Box is currently in beta testing with partner companies. Tests include e-commerce stores, logistics and even insurance companies. To ensure that the goods in the package are safe, not just traceable, the box is equipped with temperature and shock sensors. There is also a provision for an internal camera, which in the future would allow people to keep an eye on the product they are shipping inside the box packaging. What anxiety.
Goodbye cardboard packaging - it sounds too good to be true. How much?
It doesn't seem like it (I wouldn't bet on it), but the ecological and innovative Box is quite affordable. At least that's what the company says, speaking of costs "comparable to those of current cardboard packaging". Health! At the end of the cycle, as mentioned, the box will be repaired and refurbished to "be used another 1000 times", says LivingPackets. Proposing to eliminate up to 90% of carbon dioxide emissions, the box has its own sealing mechanism inside. This means that not only the cardboard packaging is eliminated, but also the packaging with the air-filled bubbles that we liked to pop, or the polystyrene "chips", or other things.
