Apple selling +$1000 smartphones without a charger or earbuds to minimize packaging to help to save the environment.
Yesterday I received my Apple Watch 6 and ended up with this pile of packaging materials ???
Where did you buy it from? Third party retailers aren’t as considerate.
Wholeheartedly agree with you on less packaging. I always carry around extra bag & containers when I shop so I can just take the item without additional packaging.
Although, it looks like the packaging for the Apple Watch is a lot, I’d also take a look at the kind of packaging used.
Is it recyclable or a recycled material?
Can they be reused?
Can they be disposed properly (I.e. biodegradable, compostable)?
As much as I like recycled materials, if it’s too much that meant the company also used resources to recycle those materials. Would be better if there’s a way to reduce it further.
Most packaging can’t be reused, but sometimes I keep them to used as a gift box. I sometimes use it to prank people by giving them an iPhone box but it contains a trinket. It does produce a good laugh especially among friends and families.
Yeah, that too. Apple could’ve been referring to recyclable packaging.
We received our two watches – so we had two piles like that. Not only the amount of packaging, but all the unwrapping and fiddling involved.
True, it came direct from China so maybe a bit extra package was justified.
OTOH – the packaging that came a few days ago to ship the return of the watch trade-ins is very simple: small, with a smartly designed insert to slip the watch into and suspend it inside the package. The new watches could have been packaged the same way, IMO.
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I bought it online from the Apple store.
Refurbished? 
Nope brand new Apple Watch 6 waited 2 months for it to arrive.
Something must’ve happened during that long wait time.
It arrived one day earlier as promises when I ordered it.
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Fireplace kindling perhaps?
It’s 98% paper. I don’t see the issue.
Uh, maybe it was interfered with?
Regardless, I don’t see the problem. The packaging is very much recyclable. The amount of space the box takes, that doesn’t count for everything.
Its bigger picture then just recycled paper…
Recycling paper cost energy, manufacturing the elaborate packaging cost energy, ink glue etc. Then transporting the volume and weight.
Its not just the recycled paper that is hopefully recycled but the entire product and transport lifecycle.
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And what do we know about any of that?
I suggest a tour trough a plant where they make packaging. Followed by a paper recycling plant etc
I doubt that anybody on this forum has ever taken a tour through a packaging plant.
I have! I feel like half my elementary school experience was touring local businesses. No bearing on this discussion, though.
I’ve also worked in a recycling plant for enough time to attest to recycling being more energy intensive than re-using/repurposing in the home, and not requiring the packaging in the first place.
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Welp… 
Me too. And also a glass plant recycling glass bottles to make new ones.
Best is to reduce at the source as in not create it. Second best is re-use at home. A distant 3rd is recycling, in part because, like fast internet, there may not BE any place to recycle things where you are. We have no recycling in our county at all. No place to take paper or cardboard, or plastics or glass or anything. The only “recycling” that is available is the local 4-H club that collects aluminum cans as a fund raiser but that’s it. The other recycling is potentially a compost heap for vegetable scraps if you maintain one yourself.
The worst option is trash the stuff but it happens more often than you can imagine for the above mentioned reasons.
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