Earth friendly packaging

They sell biodegradable packing peanuts. They're typically made out of corn or wheat starch so they dissolve in water, or you can throw them in your compost.

What I always find amusing is finding Lionel boxes for sale. Some of these people break down sets, and they'll then try to sell the box itself for upwards of $20 to $40. Are people really paying $40 for a box?

You're not supposed to discard the packaging.  

What, me worry?

Deuce posted:

What I always find amusing is finding Lionel boxes for sale. Some of these people break down sets, and they'll then try to sell the box itself for upwards of $20 to $40. Are people really paying $40 for a box?

I have been looking for a PE set box for over a year, and the cheapest I have been able to find someone willing to part with it is $50 "because of the shipping."    One person wants $53 for the box and another $35 to ship it.  Of course, the same box full of the trains ships for $40 . . . .

I am all for biodegradable packaging whenever possible. Our oceans are drowning (pun intended) in plastic. 

Due to lack of storage space, I pitch most new train boxes except very rare items and engines. In the old days, you could break down boxes and flatten them so they took up so much less storage space. Can’t do that anymore. 

Deuce posted:

They sell biodegradable packing peanuts. They're typically made out of corn or wheat starch so they dissolve in water, or you can throw them in your compost.

What I always find amusing is finding Lionel boxes for sale. Some of these people break down sets, and they'll then try to sell the box itself for upwards of $20 to $40. Are people really paying $40 for a box?

Ross uses those biodegradable packing peanuts.  

You need to empty the ashes out of that fireplace once in a while. Nick

Or you could replace the packing back into the shipping box and have it shipped back to the sender.

Of course, if you return to cardboard you'll be "cutting down all the trees and owls"; and the burning? Is that still legal where you live? I wish it was still do-able - that's the way to get rid of something - gone for good. And fun to do. Of course, then the coughing and lung things start increasing again, and we're back to styrofoam. I say if cardboard is good enough for my Big Mac, it's good enough for trains!

We just need to stop making s**t. And babies. Especially babies. Unless they get electric trains for Xmas.

"Friendly" packaging adds to the seller's cost.  Do you want to pay for it, or does that give rise to a new thread about increased shipping charges?

In so far as the collector market goes, the train be it locomotive, car, or whatever the value goes down by about half when the original packaging is missing. So 40 years from now when your heirs are selling your MTH collection they will have to take a sizeable discount and find some packaging for the Amazon drone to carry it away in.

Bogie

Alfred E Neuman posted:

You're not supposed to discard the packaging.  

What, me worry?

This.

Good luck with this thought, pal.

More than a year ago I contacted one of the manufacturers of the very nice built-and-ready buildings that come in the black and clear clamshell packaging.  My request was simple....add the appropriate recycling symbol to the (simple, cheap, easily modified???) packaging dies that form the HUGE pieces of plastic so that our township recycling service will accept it.  The recycling service policy: no triangular/numbered symbol, recycling unacceptable. 

Actually, as the township explained it to me, the folks that make the neighborhood roadside pick-ups have no problem with picking unmarked items up....it's the places they dump/sell the collection to that cannot accept it.  Ergo, if a collection service becomes excessive in 'contamination' of their loads, they will lose their ability to sell/dump to a sorter, impacting the collector's business, having to travel farther to find a dumping site, resulting in higher waste collection costs to the township, etc., etc., etc., blah, blah.

So I sez to myself, 'Self!  How hard could this be??'.  So I phoned the product manufacturer about it.  Gee, come to find out, they knew instantly what material the formed black and clear packaging shells were made of, but when I suggested that they add the appropriate symbols to the dies the response was, 'I'll let the appropriate person know about your request.'   So far?.....zip, nada, (yawn), .    Maybe something was lost in translating the request to Mandarin?

They're not alone, of course.  There are manufacturers/packagers of rolling stock, et al, that use the formed clear plastic clamshell approach.....without recycling symbols.  There are more than one manufacturer of structures...in multiple scales, even....that use this packaging approach.  And, I for one would be more encouraged to ditch the boxes and interior packaging were they to have appropriate recycling labeling.

I'm a retired engineer with 30+ years in a business that made huge numbers of molded plastic parts.  That it's so difficult....or even costly????....to add this recycling symbol to some insignificant, easy-to-accomplish location in a die of metal, wood, ....whatever,....is beyond me.  

I'm about done storing all of this 'trash' beneath the tables, in the closets, overhead shelving, etc., etc..  I'm not happy about the prospect of contributing to Mt. Trashmore somewhere around here, rather than doing my part for Mother Earth.   A tree-hugging visitor to the layout last year, upon seeing this storage conundrum had a succinct comment....'Nice collection of kindling you've got there, eh?'.   He's right.

It would be nice if the manufacturers of this stuff could do their part.

I know, I know......

KD

In the broad sense, there's far too much packaging in the world. 

Look in the hardware aisles of the Lowes/Menards/Home Depot nearest you.  Thousands of plastic bags and boxes to hold from 2 to 200 fasteners.  I'm old enough to remember going into a hardware store and scooping nails and screws out of barrels.

Buy a bottle of Tylenol:  Cardboard box, plastic bottle, plastic seal, foil overseal, plastic around the lid, cotton ball inside. . . .  (Spare me the outcry about being Poisoned! by saboteurs:  best I can determine, the only confirmed case of that was someone who spiked the pills IN the factory, prior to the shipping of the bottles.)

Why are footballs encased in plastic and cardboard boxes? 

Some of this stuff is inevitable, I guess, but we could do without a significant percentage of it except for the demands of the retailers.

Wait a minute......your worried about"earth friendly"packaging but your burning the boxes and releasing excess carbon and toxic dioxins into the environment.

On top of that. Since the boxes are not being recycled even more trees will be cut down to make new boxes.

Check out this package. www.greencellfoam.com/disposal-video It's biodegradable and compostable and the meat got here frozen.

I keep all my boxes. I do store them inside of one another where I can. Keeping stuff out of the landfill is more important than burning it. 

Dave

RickO posted:

Wait a minute......your worried about"earth friendly"packaging but your burning the boxes and releasing excess carbon and toxic dioxins into the environment.

On top of that. Since the boxes are not being recycled even more trees will be cut down to make new boxes.

And I doubt that trash bag is biodegradable. 

TM Terry posted:

Or you could replace the packing back into the shipping box and have it shipped back to the sender.

Andy Rooney, of 60 Minutes, Had a suggestion a few years ago.  You know all of the junk mail you get, right ?   Well, it usually comes with a postage paid return envelope so that you can send back the filled out forms they have sent you, because you know you want whatever it is they're selling.....LOL  Well Andy said, instead of throwing it all in the trash or recycle bin, simply put the forms in the return envelope, not filled out of course, and mail it back to whomever sent it.  They have to pay for the return postage, which is usually at a lower rate.  But who cares, because they still have to pay based on volume.  So the more junk mail they get back, the more postage they pay !!!!!

I reuse the shipping cartons if they aren't banged up and reuse the bubble wrap and packing peanuts. I recycle bin cartons that are banged up from transit. If you have no use for the packing peanuts, The UPS Store or Fed Ex Office will take them off your hands to prevent them from going into the land fill, at least for one more time.

I recycled and watched the cost of our cities trash removal drop 

My green cans go out more than the "swill" can.

 Tell you're kids I said you're welcome 

 The tree huggers are plasticing us to death. Their protesting years ago was the snowball that led us to this plastic avalanche. Go back to the logging sites where their protesting took place years ago and you'll find a thicker forest of trees then what was there before the logging took place.

 Plastic never goes away once it's made. It only breaks down into smaller and smaller particles. So small, it can be found in the cells of the fish we eat. There is a great documentary called "Trashed" that I guarantee will sicken you. 

   Plastic is man made and pollutes the Earth. Wood is earth made and fertilizes the Earth. So the next time we need a gallon of milk, it "wood" benefit us all if we "wood" buy 2 card board half gallons, instead of a one gallon plastic container. The only way we as consumers can reduce the production of plastic garbage in the world, would be to try our best to steer toward the companies that are steering away from the plastic packaging.

 I agree with JUSHAVNFUN 100%.

Now just watch - the manufacturers take your suggestion and make it all "biodegradable"  but then it will start to biodegrade on your shelf!  Great weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth here as your packing begins to 'return itself to the earth' and sticks to your engines!  

Do you know that some of the most valuable real estate in NYC is lower Manhattan that is built on landfill?   They called it garbage back then.  Same in the far East.  Styrofoam can be recycled, but there is no market for it.  

I don't want litter, I don't want garbage in my streams or forests, but you may feel good about yourself for putting the right item in the right can, but in the big picture - it doesn't matter.

Earth Friendly?  It doesn't matter to the earth.  What matters is keeping your portion of it habitable.   

I Don't want biodegradable packaging on my train boxes. I want sturdy long lasting boxes as the boxes are 30 percent of the value! As far as the shipping containers, I reuse them as stated above when I am selling my trains. Any severely damaged shipping boxes are burned in my fireplace and ashes spread across my lawn for the gras to grow in the summer. Plastic is thrown in the plastic recycling bin.

Dave Zucal posted:

 The tree huggers are plasticing us to death. Their protesting years ago was the snowball that led us to this plastic avalanche. Go back to the logging sites where their protesting took place years ago and you'll find a thicker forest of trees then what was there before the logging took place.

“Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease” Peter Senge

I understand the thoughts of this issue, however as a shipper of non train related items...I appreciate good packaging when I get it and...I try to reuse packaging as much as possible.  Fortunately, I ship a lot with my business and can reuse most packing materials and boxes, unless the boxes are beat up and then I can still break them down and use for extra inner wall strength.

Shipping and shipping materials are a conundrum.  Consumers complain if there isn't enough packaging and something breaks and they complain when there is too much packaging or it isn't biodegradable, etc.  IMO, the company that is shipping the products thoughts are:

1.  We don't want the item to break in shipping.
2. Cheap shipping and packaging costs.
3. Good looking well marked packaging with our logo all over the package.
4.  Environmental thoughts (not really 4th...more like 25th)

I remember when I first started my business years ago, I got email about non biodegradable packing pnuts, then I went to biodegradable, then I got complaints about the volume of pnuts, then I switched to biodegradable foam inserts molded around the product and I got complaints they couldn't reuse them like pnuts... and each time I changed shipping the shipping costs went up.  So it is and was a no win situation.

My suggestion is to go to a FedEx Kinkos or UPS store to recycle the packing pnuts and cardboard boxes you get.  They will reuse them.  If you don't want or keep the Lionel or MTH boxes offer them for sale for the cost of shipping...It is a box so wrap it in kraft paper and ship it to the next person.

BTW, my municipality now doesn't recycle glass and charge extra for recycling pickup...go figure now trying to help the environment costs extra to the homeowner!

Jushavnfun posted:

It's time for manufacturer's to change packaging, made from recycled material, recyclable, everywhere all the time. I have no ability to recycle styrofoam in my town, way to much , I burn the paper products.

1 trash bag from 23 assorted freight cars.

If product price go up or down because of this so be it.

The only boxes I am keeping are engine & caboose, sets, & accessories. The regular car boxes go.

I remember in the late 80's some office supply companies used popcorn, but mice rats and birds infestations put an end to that.

I buy from Gryzbroski and they use lots of paper to pack boxes with, it arrives safe and sound, however still on factory packaging, but it's a start.

Anyway that's what I think.

You should plat Christmas music while burning the boxes in the fire place

OldBogie posted:

In so far as the collector market goes, the train be it locomotive, car, or whatever the value goes down by about half when the original packaging is missing. So 40 years from now when your heirs are selling your MTH collection they will have to take a sizeable discount and find some packaging for the Amazon drone to carry it away in.

Bogie

Forty years from now the market for O gauge train is likely to be miniscule, resulting in low prices anyway.