hello my joyful friends,
today I decided to clean my son’s room. My son, as you may have read in my earlier posts, is away, far away, at college. I have been using his room as a dumping ground for my “stuff”. All that stuff that doesn’t have a place to go, or, is in some sort of holding pattern. Mostly, stuff for my MOW route, stuff I plan to relocate at a future time, crafts items (flowers stuff, canning stuff, and so much other miscellaneous stuff. Not sure where all this stuff went before he left for college, but there it lies.
One of those things was a huge pile of cardboard boxes. First task was to break them down and take them to my office to put in the dumpster. Many were from, gulp, Amazon, yes, I am a bad person. I try, (“you do or you don’t, there is no try!” – that’s a future rant!) not to order from Amazon, but there are times when I do need things the next day. For example, since there has been a nasty flu going around and people have been stockpiling items, I haven’t been able to find cat pan (aka-box) liners. The other day I finally found some, bought them, and when I went to change the box, they were too small. I went online looking for them and couldn’t find any near me. I’m talking 15 mile radius! Of course, I did find some on Amazon, and they were delivered to me in 2 days (that nasty flu has been delaying deliveries as well!). I mean, what was I to do?
The second source of all these boxes was, saved boxes. You know, that gift box you will use next Christmas, that box you might need for an Amazon return, that box that is the perfect size for…well, something, I’m sure of it! There were other mail order boxes (Hautelook – I’m looking at you!”), and the boxes that you saved in case you needed to return this valuable item, say the toaster ($15), the Instant Pot, the box from an Ipad I didn’t even still have? Steve knows how to make a really cool box!
So, I decided to break them down, all of them! The second I told myself “I might NEED this one”, I grabbed the box cutter and broke it down. BTW, many boxes break down very nicely and could be stored for future use without taking up all that space. No! Put the box down and walk away!
Retailwire.com states that “Cardboard is more biodegradable than plastic, but the problem is that consumers are poor recyclers. The Fibre Box Association contends that while 90 percent of corrugated packaging gets recycled, the leftover 10 percent still adds up.” Forbes says “E-commerce packaging in the US uses the equivalent of 1 billion trees a year for cardboard alone.
Something for us all to think about and to do something about!
I am making a commitment to you, here and now, to not order anything off Amazon.com for one month!
until we meet again,
Joy
commitment: an engagement or obligation that restricts freedom of action.
Joyfully Aging 