Amazon Unveils Frustration-Free Packaging

ByABC News
November 4, 2008, 10:32 AM

— -- Some products come in packaging so tough it takes a chainsaw to rip open them. Amazon is trying to eliminate this "wrap rage" with its new Frustration-Free Packaging for 19 of its best-selling products from manufacturers such as Microsoft, Fisher-Price, Mattel, and Transcend.

Products prone to department store theft, such as children's toys and technology peripherals, are generally guilty of nightmarish packaging. They're often sold in disproportionately large, hermetically sealed plastic containers that are difficult to sneak out of the store, but take forever to open. Amazon realizes you can't steal something you've already paid for and will now liberate the product for you and ship it in a recyclable brown cardboard container.

The19 products that Amazon has released from their environmentally-unfriendly packaging include several Microsoft mice and some Transcend SDHC memory cards.

Another purpose of Frustration-Free Packaging is to achieve environmental sustainability through waste reduction. Amazon's initiative will take time to gain momentum, but the company hopes that all of its wares will be Frustration-Free within several years.