Adafruit Plastic Waste

I wrote a post on the Adafruit Forums a while back about how Adafruit could reduce the amount of waste when fulfilling orders. They pre-package all their products in plastic bags, and when you order multiples, they simply pull multiple packages off the shelf and put them in your order.

This is a typical order for me. Eleven SKUs (plus a freebie I have no way to refuse).¹ There are 15 individual parts in this order (16 if you include the unwanted freebie).

These products came in 48 individual plastic bags, some within other bags:

Now while I realize many customers may want individual products in individual bags, I (and I suspect most customers) end up putting the parts in drawers or some other storage. That is, we remove each part from their bags and consolidate them.

But it would save both Adafruit and most customers a fair bit of labor if parts were packaged when fulfilling orders. I could've had ten bags of parts if picked into one-bag-per-SKU. Worst case it would’ve been 15 bags (one per individual part type).

Since several of the parts I ordered had related parts (like the Feather RP2350 optionally included headers), those all could have been included in one bag, probably getting me down to seven bags.

Most parts fulfillment works like this. Certainly DigiKey, Mouser, McMaster, and SDP/SI all do this.

Adafruit should, too. It would save money, time, and help the environment.