How do I hate packing peanuts? Let me count the ways…
I hate thee when I first open a shipping box and thou most unnatural puffiness floats before my eyes.
I hate thee when I have to dig through thee to find the tiny thing I ordered and far too many of you escape and hide for months under the couch.
I hate thee when I realize even the “biodegradable version” of you still jailbreaks far too often.*
I especially hate thee when you break into bitty synthetic bits that make you even harder to detect.
I superdooper especially hate thee when you cling to my hands and clothes, not to mention the cat.
Have I mentioned how much fun thou ist to fish out of recyclable boxes? In my town, you have to extract all non-paper packing materials before you put everything curbside. If the guy who picks up your separated items sees even one peanut, he will leave that lonely box at the end of the driveway, rejected and marked with an invisible scarlet P.
I hate that.
Of course, all I have to do to avoid PPS (Packing Peanut Syndrome) is to stop buying stuff from catalogs or the Internet.** This will greatly reduce my consumption levels and bring my PPS incidences virtually to nil but doesn’t do anything about other people sending us stuff.
Hey, we’ve got a Do Not Call Registry, can we start a Do Not Send Me Stuff in Packing Peanuts Registry?!
Sign me up!
*By this I mean, they don’t respond when you say “sit!”
**My husband is in the background cheering. Of course, he doesn’t realize I mean him, too.
For more on environmental issues related to poly packaging:
http://www.ehow.com/list_7326024_negative-concerns-eps-plastic-packaging.html
Copyright 2012, Lori Fontanes
What the Ducks! 