Packaging Responsibly

After my family received a whole round of DVDs during the holidays, I began to question the practicality of a common packaging technique—using paperboard “sleeves” to cover plastic DVD cases. Two of my sons received some of their favorite movies for Christmas, and both are quite adept at finding them, removing the the discs, covering them with fingerprints, and often scratching them on something prior to putting them in the DVD player upside down. But just before I started cringing at their handling of the discs, they took the DVD case out of the cardboard sleeve, dropped the sleeve to the floor, and proceeded to step on it en route to the DVD player, ultimately creasing the packaging, ripping it in places, and rendering it useless. The inherent problems with their not looking where they’re stepping notwithstanding, just the idea that there was one more thing to pick up off the floor and put away annoyed me. The boys are 4 and 2, so after going nine rounds to get them to eat their peas, I’ll endure leaving a DVD sleeve on the floor for now.