Amazon.com has launched Frustration-Free Packaging, an effort to cut down on excessive waste from overpackaged items and to make products easier to open.
Toys, computer mice and memory cards from Fisher-Price, Mattel, Microsoft and Transcend are among the initial 19 products being offered in Frustration-Free Packaging. Amazon.com's packaging effort is aimed at getting rid of hard-to-open sealed plastic clamshells, numerous wire ties and extra cardboard.
Some of the items even come without printed materials, packaged instead in plain brown boxes. For toys like the Batmobile and Batpod (below), the individual items are placed in bags - which, although still plastic, replace molded plastic, ties and other materials - and then the no-frills cardboard box.
The Frustration-Free Packaging option for Fisher-Price's Imaginext Adventures Pirate Ship, for example, provides a reduction of 1,576.5 square inches of printed corrugated inserts, 175.25 square inches of PVC blisters, 36.1 square inches of folding carton materials, 36 inches of plastic-coated steel-wire ties, two molded plastic fasteners and 3.5 square inches of ABS molded styrene.
Each product is available in either traditional or Frustration-Free packaging, with no price difference. Each item's page on Amazon.com includes a description of what has been taken out of the packaging to make it Frustration-Free, along with pictures showing what the product will look like when it comes in the mail.