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Software Packaging And The Environment?
jayhawk88 asks: "One of my users brought me Microsoft Street and Trips 2001 to install on their laptop yesterday. The box for Street and Trips is fairly large: a little taller than a regular software box, and about 1.5 times wider. The contents, however, are as follows: a standard size jewel case, and a 3-page folded leaflet, that is about half the size or a regular sheet of paper. I'm no environmentalist, but holding the entire contents of this over-sized box in the palm of my hand almost makes me sick. Clearly, this is simply Microsoft spending a pile of cash on packaging to be the biggest and shiniest title on the shelf at CompUSA, but it did get me thinking. Has there ever been a push to 'slim down' software packaging, similar to what happened with CD's in the early 90s? If not, should there be?"
Consumer Reports has a "over packaged hall of fame" thing (can't remember what they call it) they run every month. Three months ago it was 6 cloth napkins from a dept store: Each napkin came in it's own box that was about the size of a desktop computer. It was a pretty funny picture--the napkins are in a tiny pile in the foreground and boxes are mounded up all over the room.
Why not submit Streets Plus (or something else even worse) to CR? It won't stem the tide but it might get people thinking.
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I am quite confident that more and more firms will make there software available via download. No packaging whatsoever.
This of course leads to the problem of getting all of your documentation only viewable on screen, but this will be acceptable because 99.4% of all software documentation is not even suitable to line a birdcage with to begin with.
all persons, living and dead, are purely coincidental. - Kurt Vonnegut
The bigger the box, the less likely someone is going to make it out the door with it stuffed under their shirt..
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They call it the "Golden Cocoon Award" (maybe "Golden Cocoon Award of Overpacking" or something like that) and they sometimes show it as part of a feature that they always (at least, last I checked) run on the very last page of the magazine about strange marketting techniques or just plain stupid ploys. There isn't necessarily a Golden Cocoon handed out every issues, they just give them out as they run across deserving products.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Have you ever noticed how just about every box on a store shelf is of a similar size and shape? Not just software, but cans of peas, soup, cereal, crackers, cookies, etc. If you make your package stand out too much, it won't fit properly and the stores will get mad at the manufacturers.
The other problem for software manufacturers is that if you make your packaging too small it won't be noticed as easily (that's the theory anyway). Marketers know that having a shiny box is very important in impulse decisions, same as with books, and if you make it small people won't see it next to el crapo title even if you have the hotest game of the year.
On another note, one of the more sensible packages I've seen lately is for Homeworld. It actually had a good manual in it, just under half an inch thick. Those big boxes started out containing those useful manuals of olde, but no longer...
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Eric is chisled like a Greek Godess
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Well, let's remember that the box is mostly air. It doesn't take that much more material to make a 2-inch-thick box over a 1 inch box (someone want to run a quick calculation? I guess about 5% more material).
In any case, compared to the volume of newspapers, magazines, and junk mail, I think computer boxes probably are about 0.001% of the total paper mass, much less total garbage mass.
If you want to focus on garbage generation, this is not the place. I could even argue that any paper really isn't the place, since that is pretty easy to recycle.
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Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Overpackaging is just a tiny sliver of the waste this brave new digital world has brought. We were supposed to have "paperless" offices. But instead computers have made printing so easy that nobody thinks twice about printing anything out and we end up with more waste.
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This has been a very common problem in retail stores, where the hardware profit margin is in the single digits, and you have to sell alot of software and peripherals to make it up.
Long ago and far away, I used to work in a now defunct retail chain. I can recall going through a store and finding empty boxes, merchandise gone. The complex fold over of the cardboard etc is thought out to prevent just this. Considering the cost of cardboard, vs 50 - 500 dollar product, the trade off is a pain, but understandable.
heck I can even remember people buying a computer, and then returning it, saying it was broken. We would take it apart, and it would be missing the ram, the harddrive, etc. We could not "prove" that they stolen it, but it was obvious that they had. [We didn't have the resources.] We even went to setting up the machine and and running it first, in the store, just to cut down on the theft. it was insane.
no wonder the chain went under. Some people have no morals whatsoever.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I wish Consumer Reports would put out a book consisting solely of items from the "Selling It" page. I'd buy it in a minute.
I actually tried to suggest this to them once, but I'll be damned if I can find an email address for them. I looked about 6 months ago--combed through the magazine, searched the online site: nothing.
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Buying software online has some other benefits too. For example, a customer in Canada can buy software from the US and download it. This bypass waiting, shipping costs, Canadian sales taxes and import duties. Customs have a little bit of catching up to do. If the US introduces sales taxes for online purchases, some companies are going to make a lot of money by selling to them from overseas. Can you imagine how hard that is to enforce?
The comparison with music CD packaging doesn't quite work. Most people have some idea of what they are getting when they buy a music CD. With music, you are typically buying a kind of entertainment that you are already familiar with You've heard a song or two from it before, and that is the main reason you seek out that disc over the many others available in the store.
With software, consumers are buying the idea that this software is going to serve some useful purpose for them. Many people don't know if one particular package is what is right for them or not. Should it be Paint Shop Pro, Photoshop or CorelDraw?
The packaging convinces them that the product will make their computer that much more powerful and productive. That's a tough stunt to pull off in only 5.5 inches square.
Additionally, consumers perceive that the size of the packaging relates to the power and amount of features of the software inside. There is a reason that Quicken Basic comes in a slim box and Quicken Home & Business comes in a thick one. And it's not because they needed the room to stuff in a bigger manual. "It has the bigger box, so there must be *more* in there!" Consumers already get confused about what the difference is between the three versions. The box sizes let them know that they are getting *more* (if only in packaging) for their money.
Even commercial Linux distros do this. Compare the "Business" and "Secure Server" versions to the basic versions.
Do I like that? No.
But I'm not expecting the relationship between consumers and marketers to change enough for software packaging to become more environmentally efficient. Even with the move to electronic distribution. I know enough holdouts who want to hold something in their hands before they'll plunk down money for it.
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I don't have any details but I remember way back when... some group sued [a] computer software manufacturer[s] due to a law which says that you can't make your package larger than the contents just to make it look like you are getting more than you are really getting. The case didn't have any effect though because it was argued that the size of the box was necessary due to the amount of space needed to describe / advertise the product. I wish I could find a URL about it...
(I think that would work pretty well for a container of food or something. Every notice the indentations they put in the bottoms of shampoo / etc bottles, and around the middle sometimes, and then a nice tall plastic end-cap, probably to make it looke like you are getting more than you are?)
Folks here have already mentioned audio CDs, which used to be packaged in huge cardboard boxes, but now are almost always sold in plain jewel boxes. If shoplifting is an issue, the store can lock the CDs in reusable plastic extenders, which are annoying, but (presumably) not wasteful.
Computer software is different. Think of games, in particular, since that's where packaging really comes into its own. Some computer games will always require a large box... any Sid Meier game, for example. Many other games could be sold in jewel boxes, but those games still have to compete with the ones in large boxes. Even the most rational consumer couldn't help but pay more attention to the huge Falcon 8.0 box, with its three volume manual, than to the little Quake IV CD, sitting in a rack with hundreds of other identical jewel boxes.
MSK
One thing you can do is open the box at the checkout, take the stuff out, and hand the trash to the cashier. I have tried this before. It is amazing how much garbage there is when you even go someplace like the grocery store.
There are tons of products out there on the market that are overpackaged. Andes Mints are a good example. If you look at a package of them, you will see what appears to be a whole bunch of mints through the cellophane window. Open the box and all the mints you can see are the ones you are getting. The rest is just cardboard.
Also, to the person that submitted the story: this type of stuff has as much to do with common sense and waste of money as it does with being environmental. TANSTAAFL. When you buy one of these oversized packages, the manufacturer is not giving this to you for free, ya know? You the consumer are the one paying for it. Hence, why I give the trash back to the store.
After all, why should I have to pay to throw away their overpackaging of my SIMM chips when putting the chips in a little container would be much better in the first place?