[kube-system]

Cardboard boxes get a decent amount of reuse around my house, and I'm sure many others. They're certainly better for reuse than bag/envelope style packaging.

But yeah, at the scale of a large business, reuse makes no sense, because sorting and classifying them is labor intensive.

[cbhl]

IIRC the boxes that Wal-mart uses internally are marked "return for reuse, each box cost an average of $1"

But yeah, not so much for, say, Amazon

[ilamont]

Thanks for sharing that $1 cost. It's for exactly this reason that we prefer to use many USPS Priority Mail flat rate mailers/boxes because they are free. In one case requiring a special cardboard tube, we looked into getting our own tubes but the cost was close to $3 unless you wanted to buy 1000 units. So we stuck with USPS "triangular tubes" which are included in the price of a $14 flat rate postage anywhere in the U.S.