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Your support makes all the difference.Online auction and retail site eBay has announced that it will begin using reusable boxes in an environmentally friendly initiative designed to reduce packaging waste.
The idea behind the scheme is that sellers can request the box which will be sent to them by eBay; the box can then be sent continuously back and forth between sellers and buyers before it is rendered unusable and is recycled. Each box is made entirely from Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified material, eBay estimate that if a 100,000 boxes were each used five times, the annual savings would be equivalent to 4,000 trees, 2.4 million gallons of water and enough energy would be conserved to power 49 homes for an entire year."
The scheme will commence in October when eBay will send out boxes to the first 100,000 sellers that request them; recipients of the new boxes can log on to a dedicated website and report the status of their box, eBay will then track the boxes and evaluate how to proceed with the scheme.
A spokesperson for eBay was unable to say when the scheme would be introduced in Europe.
Online retailer Amazon has been making efforts to reduce its packaging waste since 2007, the majority of its products are shipped in 100 percent recyclable containers and the packaging is designed so as to minimize waste.
EBay users interested in requesting reusable boxes from the site can visit: http://thebox.ebay.com/coming_soon.html
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