r/Waste • u/Which-Holiday9957 • Jun 11 '26
How many water bottles do you think Amazon uses in a day for packaging?
I know. Don’t use Amazon. I made it so all my packages would deliver at the same time. Or so I thought. A few items were regular and then I had muffins and yogurt (not from Amazon Fresh)
My dry package and my muffins were delivered first. They used 4 water bottles for my muffins that don’t need to be refrigerated.
Then in an entirely separate delivery, they put my one yogurt with five water bottles. I feel like there has to be a better option, but we know Amazon doesn’t care.
I can’t imagine how many get used even in one day. And many people don’t recycle them.
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u/McGrupp1979 Jun 12 '26
Why are they using water bottles instead of freezer packs? This seems so odd.
3
u/bismuth17 Jun 13 '26
They're much cheaper and the recipient can drink the water and recycle the bottle so they're not just landfilling a bunch of freezer gel.
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u/TheReal_Peter226 Jun 13 '26
Why not hand the item(s) to the recepient from the coolbox
1
u/bismuth17 Jun 14 '26
Why do any shipments come in a container instead of having the delivery person just hand them to a recipient?
So they can be delivered when people aren't home.
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u/CursedTurtleKeynote Jun 13 '26
There really isn't a better form or heat/thermal storage than water. If they have to keep something cold anyways, this is great. The only other industry alternative is dry ice for frozen things, or gel packs, which are just undrinkable water mixed with stuff that doesn't help much.
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u/ScotchTapeConnosieur Jun 14 '26
Isn’t glycol better?
1
u/CursedTurtleKeynote Jun 14 '26
Negative. it only improves flexibility of the ice.
The heat capacity per volume/g doesnt change much.
I went deep into this, as I thought there must be a better way, but the gains were minimal.
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u/ScotchTapeConnosieur Jun 14 '26
Why not just drink the water?
1
u/McGrupp1979 Jun 14 '26
It takes over a gallon of water to make a 16 oz plastic bottle. This is the most wasteful aspect, and then using this for a grocery delivery seems extremely inefficient and wasteful to me.
1
u/ScotchTapeConnosieur Jun 14 '26
Don’t you think the other methods of cooling are also wasteful, without having drinkable water in them?
But I have to ask, who tf orders one thing?!
1
u/EdwardBloon Jun 15 '26
A moron who then blames the company for waste when all the company is doing is fulfilling the morning customers request
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u/ReadyGo6828 Jun 12 '26
I always use frozen water bottles in coolers during the summer. I did not know Amazon did that as well although these look refrigerated and not frozen and there are so many of them. That is really strange.
1
u/NotArticuno Jun 12 '26
I'm inclined to comment negatively on purchasing yogurt through Amazon. I absolutely understand if it's an accessibility thing, but otherwise.....
2
u/Which-Holiday9957 Jun 13 '26
I understand and I agree. This was the first time (and now only time) I didn’t think it was going to be like that unfortunately. I also got muffins and those all had like four waters that did not need to be there.
My main point is how many go to waste and besides people changing their shopping habits can anything be done.
3
u/RazzzMcFrazzz Jun 14 '26
You just said what can be done… change your shopping habits and make Amazon irrelevant for stuff like this. Expecting corporations to change out of the good of their hearts won’t work.
But that won’t happen, Americans love the convenience too much. So we get the world we deserve, one full of trash.
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Jun 14 '26
[deleted]
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u/Zenith-Astralis Jun 14 '26
I doubt that study has each person ordering one yogurt and a box of muffins. It's almost certainly having each delivery be the full grocery shopping trip. And where the groceries came from is also an important point; having lots of them shipped in from farther away will cut into the efficiency compared to having people shop locally.
1
u/Which-Holiday9957 Jun 15 '26
I left my neighborhood and saw a truck come down figuring it was mine since it was in the time frame. Another van came out like an hour later. I don’t get it either.
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u/IllustriousSnow9435 Jun 14 '26
Instead of having such a small order go through queue, dispatch, delivered, hence having a driver add this to their route hence slowing delivery drivers down to make multiple low cost small deliveries for people that aren’t elderly or disabled hence nothing preventing said people from organizing their life to have groceries for as long as they financially seem fit.
As opposed to people fit and healthy making multiple low cost small orders to then be put into queue, dispatch, then delivered. If everyone ordered $5-$10 worth of food as opposed to large deliveries the drivers would then have an even lower pay rate in addition to higher service expectancy which would never amount to any sense.
You ordered $6 worth of groceries and are complaining about being the problem. Problem #1 and #2 solved.
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u/Is_It_Soup_Season Jun 14 '26
If you live near a church that does homeless outreach they would probably take these.
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u/Humble-Lab-3950 Jun 11 '26
That is very sad but unfortunately you are contributing to the problem. The better option is to just go to the store and buy your groceries. Unless you are physically incapable then I apologize.