Prince of Packaging HP Inc snaps up zero-plastic bottle maker Paragon of packetry HP has acquired Choose Packaging, inventor of a zero-plastic paper bottle. Choose's patented tech can hold a variety of liquids and represents an alternative to plastic bottles. "There are more than 150 million tons of single-use plastics produced each year," said the printer and laptop maker, "and HP …
No plastics from HP anymore, good.
But the number of paper bottles required for one program may be quite a challenge. Good they only send a 256 bit digital key. The key comes in stacks and trays with bottles on a pallet. Some bottles with a liquid (representing a "one") and many empty bottles (representing a "zero"). This makes the order of unpacking a bit [of a] hazard. Luckily, HP mentioned the extensive use of RS codes to do erratic unpacking correction. Unfortunately, that means that the 256 bit key is packed in a 512 bit packed stream. Oh well, lets hope it still works.
Please beware of the likes that sell you all-natural stuff in big print. No-plastic bottle? Sure, but there may be a lot of processing and chemistry involved in getting that "It's Not-Plastic" to hold water. Whether that is environmentally friendly or economically sensible can be hard to tell because all you get is the Advertisement Information Package.
A relative, who at the time was running research in a big manufacturer of aroma and fragrances explained: "We develop all-natural processes to create all those artificial flavors, because the manufacturers want the 'all natural' label. Lot's of extra chemistry, wasted energy, and effort." That's because you have to come up with 'certified, all natural' ingredients for your chemical reactions. It's still chemistry, but you replace graphite with charcoal, ...
Most of it is a big scam and the bigger the Ad-Print, the bigger the volume of hot air that needs to be covered. Note, I don't have any particular information on Choose Packaging and maybe their technology is great. But I won't believe it until I see a deeper analysis of what they do.
> A relative, who at the time was running research in a big manufacturer of aroma and fragrances explained: "We develop all-natural processes to create all those artificial flavors, because the manufacturers want the 'all natural' label.
One of my pet peeves are the food and drinks which proudly claim to have "no artificial flavourings", but which are then stuffed with sweetner.
After all, said sweetner is both artificial and added purely for the flavour!
Mind you, there's also the "juice drink" stuff, which is fruit juice that's been watered down and then boosted back up with some of the aforementioned sweetners. Ugh.
Admittedly, I'm a touch biased, since I'm one of the people for whom sweetners tend to leave a bitter aftertaste...
https://www.tasteofhome.com/article/why-do-artificial-sweeteners-taste-bitter/
I've always thought Cisco to be one of the big offenders of packing.
20 different sized screws, all in different plastic bags or boxes, within the main box. Only about 3 of which are actually required or fit your device. Surely, they could use one screw size for everything? Mind you they can;t even have standard fit rack ears across the range of boxes. Then all those separate handbooks, safety sheets. addendums, whatever. All individually wrapped. Oh, and a couple of Cat 5's - not that someone installing a cisco would have any of their own cat 5's to hand..... And of course, a selection of UK, EU and US mains cables, just in case. Then some random plastic bits that look like they came from a christmas cracker. No idea what they do.
And if you order 20 or 30 routers, you get 20 or 30 times the fluff and packing - not a bulk box/palletload of just routers and rack ear brackets.
Oh, those links to absurd packaging stories bring back memories. Back in 2007 we'd just ordered an entire offices worth of gear including racks etc and received a pallet just for the server 2003 CAL's/CD in a separate delivery to the servers and the rack.
Our assumption back then was that the shipping departments at HP, Dell et al were deliberately competing to get covered by El Reg with their absurd shipping choices, but to be fair they could have expected that pallet was going to go with all of the others and we might overlook it if just sellotaped to the packing on one of the other orders.
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