Online shopping is easy and convenient — you don't even have to get dressed to shop. One of the big drawbacks, though, is that the packaging can sometimes be a little annoying to deal with.
One Redditor had a particularly big surprise when they ordered something small from Nintendo's loyalty program, My Nintendo, and ended up with a box well beyond the product's needs.
A photo posted to Reddit shows a bird's-eye view of an open box with a much smaller box inside.
"My Nintendo's packaging waste is so absurd," the Redditor wrote.
Wasteful packaging isn't anything new, but online shopping has boomed in the years since COVID-19. According to an article from Vox, the demand for packing materials ballooned in 2020, but only about 14% of plastic packaging is recycled each year.
Plastic waste is a massive issue for the planet, with UN reports saying we are poised to produce 1,100 million tons of plastic by 2050. This plastic waste is choking our waterways and filling up landfills, and it's on all of us to do our part in reducing this waste.
One important and accessible way to help reduce plastic waste is to follow recycling guidelines. Those little triangles on your plastic packaging can help you learn where and how to recycle things. You can also look up where to find your nearest recycling center. And there are some interesting ways to reuse plastic packaging, like for planting seedlings.
Cardboard packaging, like that shown in the Reddit post, can also be used in your garden, especially if you're trying to kill your lawn and replace it with native gardens.
Redditors had plenty of thoughts about this display of wasteful packaging.
"You'd think it'd have more chance of being damaged banging around inside the bigger box rather than just posting the smaller one," one commenter said.
Another person commiserated, "I've had Best Buy send a gift card in a huge box by itself for some reason. That was really wasteful."
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