A clever upcycler found a great way to make a shipping box with a common household item almost everyone is sure to have.
A post in the r/upcycling subreddit demonstrated how to make a shipping box out of an empty box that contained school supplies. They broke the box down to lay it flat, then placed what they were shipping — a book — on the side with the labeling. They folded the box inside-out and taped it shut to make a new, blank box.
It's a simple way to reuse empty packaging without adding to landfill space or spending money on an additional product, requiring more resources. According to Road Runner Recycling, 80% of all products in the United States and the European Union are sold in cardboard packaging, and a whopping 850 million tons end up in landfills in the U.S. annually. As this material sits in landfills and decomposes, it releases methane, a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, per the EPA.
Thankfully, cardboard does have a 93% recycling rate, according to the American Forest and Paper Association. However, production of new cardboard packaging can have environmental impacts, like deforestation, which disrupts wildlife and carbon dioxide absorption, among other issues, per GreenMatch. Reusing the package is a great way to limit the effects.
Companies and organizations are also starting to incentivize recycling their old products and materials. Staples has had recycling services for 15 years and now offers rewards to customers who bring in items like ink and toner cartridges, along with dozens of other things like random cables and coffee machines.
People in the comments were amazed with the hack. One person declared it "Genius!" while another added, "Wow, I love this."
One person asked if the person was selling the book secondhand, suggesting they should give the buyer a heads-up about the unusual packaging. The original poster replied that their buyer was already aware of what was coming, and it was a bonus item from an earlier sale, so they didn't "want to waste a precious real box on it."
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