Dell and the environment: green is out, brown is in
[UPDATE: December 03, 2008 @ 5:11pm EST]
Dell has responded to this post. I like the outcome!
I have been meaning to write about this for a while, and today was the last straw.
The company I work for orders all of their computers from dell. About 4 months ago we started receiving random Adobe Acrobat Standard CDs & licenses for free with every single computer that we purchase. We did not request these CDs. At first, they came inside of the box with the computer. Soon, they started arriving in a padded envelope. After that, they began arriving in their own box, complete with paper padding, and a padded envelope. We have received well over 100 of these.
Today, a new shipment of computers came in (just 6), and we got 6 boxes, filled with packaging materials, a padded envelope, and a single Adobe Acrobat Standard. What shocked me, and added fuel to the fire, was that the boxes have now gotten bigger. A single Adobe Acrobat CD, in a DVD sized case, nows comes in a box that measures 10×19x10, complete with padding & padded envelope!
Please see photos below (the newest, largest box can be seen at the bottom of the pile):
Boxes & Packaging
Contents of the above boxes
Dell is being more BROWN and less GREEN with this method of packaging. They should be more environmentally conscious when it comes to shipping things. I wonder how much extra it cost to ship out those boxes, with packaging, and padded envelope.
Tags: adobe_acrobat, dell, environment, green, pollution
January 3rd, 2008 at 6:09 pm
[...] after my post about Dell’s very wasteful packaging, I received an email from Sean, who I assume is on Dell’s PR team, regarding what I had said: [...]
January 21st, 2008 at 11:12 am
[...] Dell and the environment: green is out, brown is in [Nexdot.net via Consumerist] [...]
February 15th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
I can’t believe you have the gall to complain about something as insignificant as this. If I was Dell, I would be shipping those discs in even bigger boxes as a way of giving the finger to alarmists like you.
June 30th, 2008 at 6:49 pm
Previous poster, Mr. If-I-was-Dell, is clearly an imbecile.
June 30th, 2008 at 7:34 pm
Anonymous….
It is precisely people like you who are the reason our economy refuses to change in light of the global economic crisis. Think about how much excess energy is used to produce, ship, and handle all of this extra erroneous packaging. Things could easily be consolidated to one or two boxes which would save time and money on the company’s part, time and money on the consumer’s part, and save energy overall (less boxes = more room for other boxes in the UPS trucks, thus using less gas and saving further money, time, and energy. When you analyze the broad effects of simply cutting down on a bit of excess packaging, things simply make sense. What’s there to argue about?
June 30th, 2008 at 7:37 pm
Insignificant? This kind of pointless waste is happening on a large scale all around us. Simply because you have the resources available to produce and ship such packages does not make it a good idea to do so. The more we are aware of it the more we can do to counteract it.
If you do not understand the logic behind this, then you have far greater problems to deal with.