[cyberrock]

That idea is intriguing but brings up a lot of questions. If I live out in the middle of nowhere, order something but take a long time to open it, when does the Amazon truck come back to take the packaging? If there's a million of us procrastinators, is it really that much better than normal centralized garbage collection? Milk bottle delivery and collection only worked because the product naturally had a time limit, and once home refrigeration took off, the practice went away because people didn't consume on the same schedule.

FWIW most Amazon packages I get nowadays are just heavy paper anyways.

[serial_dev]

You don’t need time limit, you just need to deal with the company frequently enough for this to work.

How I would imagine this work if there was will (I don’t think there is)… there are online grocery delivery services that do this already, it’s not that complicated.

You get your stuff delivered in a reusable bag. They charge you 1 dollar for the bag. Next time you have something delivered, you give the bags back and you’ll get your money back.

[cyberrock]

That also leads to my other (perhaps main) issue with this idea, which is that it requires some level of coordination or synchronicity with the delivery courier that's simply inconvenient for both of us. I've lived in apartments that 90% of couriers of any service cannot find their way around, because they weren't simple take-elevator-and-walk-to-unit designs, so I thanked the stars when we got lockers at the gate. Perhaps I could leave my packaging in a locker... but that just sounds like we re-invented trash collection? And actually, this is why I never used grocery services like Amazon Fresh or Instacart. I don't think grocery delivery is as solved as you think it is.

The implied time synchronicity also sounds like a nightmare. Taiwan does timed trash collection (you have to throw the bag into a garbage truck when it comes playing Fur Elise at 7pm) and there's a reason it hasn't spread.

I just think this is overcomplicating matters instead of just making the package generically disposable, which seems to be what's happening anyways.

[mlrtime]

It's a really bad idea, I don't see it happening any time soon. Cardboard is too cheap and easily recyclable.