Office Depot Greens Deliveries

Cardboard boxes contribute a lot of waste to landfills. They are useful if you need to mail something or if you’re moving to a new place, but what else can you really do with them?

In an attempt to save 3.5 million pounds of wood-based resources, Office Depot is rolling out a new delivery service that offers to deliver business orders in paper bags instead of boxes.

According to SustainableBusiness.com:

“Based on customer adoption rates during the a pilot program, Office Depot plans to replace approximately 5 million boxes with bags in the initial 12 months of national rollout. By so doing the company hopes to replace approximately 4.5 million pounds of cardboard boxes (average 0.95 lbs per box) with about 0.9 million pounds of paper, helping avoid the need for more than 3.5 million pounds of wood-based resources (or over 20,000 trees).”

The bags will be protected during transport by using a plastic tote made from 60% post-consumer recycled plastic. The totes will be returned and reused for future deliveries.

Although the program is currently opt-in only, over 90 percent of eligible customers in the pilot program have decided to opt in.

Do you want other companies to test out a program like this?