Recycling (Going Green)

[Ecofriendly]

Hey Best Buy,

After buying a computer, printer, and ink cartridges recently, I was struck by how much packaging was involved: a bunch of boxes, plastic and foam  inserts to protect the product during shipping. Afterwards, its not good for much except to throw away.

What if Best Buy organized a program where people could bring back the packaging of recently bought items, and then you could send it back to the  respective companies to reuse for packaging of future products of the same kind?

We could reduce our waste going to landfills and reduce the amount of new packaging we have to create. You could give people a small $5 store credit or something. With your current recycling initiative, this small addition would be an easy step.

Thanks!

-Tree Hugger

[Nokia]

The boxes are mostly corrugated and pasteboard, which most cities accept for paper recycling in your curbside bin.
The plastic bags can be recycled at most supermarkets. Also, I believe some BBs now accept bags.
The plastic inserts are usually recyclable through your curbside bins.
Expanded polystyrene can also be recycled at most grocery stores, as they accept egg cartons.

If you wanted to get those boxes back to the mfg., you'd have to ship them without breaking them down, since no mfg. is going to want to use boxes with rips and tears. There's no need to waste fuel shipping large, volumetric packaging back to the mfg. when it can be turned into raw materials and put back into the material stream.

And even if this did happen, I can guarantee you BB wouldn't be compensating people.