For the love of cardboard

Two years ago, online retailer Amazon.com vowed to do away with annoying, hard-to-open packaging. It didn’t succeed. Only a fraction of its suppliers adopted the effort to scrap those impossible-to-crack plastic bubble cases entombing many consumer goods (from toothbrushes to electronics).

But Amazon is back on the offensive again, this time using the power of angry consumers to try to convince manufacturers to change their ways and offer what it calls “frustration-free packaging.”

There are clear benefits to simple cardboard boxes. They’re cheap and environmentally friendly, for starters. But more importantly, consumers like them better than plastic—a lot better, it turns out. Companies that have switched to frustration-free boxing through Amazon have seen a 73 per cent drop in negative feedback on the site, reports the New York Times. Amazon is now taking those numbers to its suppliers to make its case against plastic, and it’s working. A number of big brands, from Duracell to Polaroid, have recently switched over to cardboard—no scissors required.