Green moving boxes: 6 reasons to prefer plastic

(11 days to possession)

Green moving boxes? Maybe I’m moving-obsessed. Or maybe the green movement really is tightening its grip on my beloved Vancouver. Either way, I’ve noticed more and more trucks around the city delivering reusable, plastic moving boxes. They park their trucks on major intersections, so you’ve probably noticed them too.

Gimmick or worthwhile? What’s the deal with green moving boxes?

Moving’s expensive enough as is – I thought this was just another scheme to get in on the racket. Yes/no? I did some research, read some reviews and arrived at the following list.

Benefits of reusable moving boxes

#1. A company delivers the plastic boxes to your door.

• You needn’t relieve friends of their own, old battered cardboard boxes, nor snoop around the back of supermarkets like shady sorts.
• You won’t even buy them at the post office like a sucker.

#2. Everything stacks neatly.

• Much like Rubbermaids of the same shape and size, green moving boxes fit together – box upon box.
• As your wall of boxes grows, it will look pretty.
• Better still, it won’t tip over.

#3. No packing tape!

• Forgotten where you put something or have a half-full box waiting for something that will fit? No problem.
• No scary gangrene-inducing box cutters.

#4. On arrival, you can begin unpacking immediately.

• No need to wrestle with a stubborn, thrice-taped box and flat-pack it into submission.
• Just lift up the velcro-closure and you’re off.
• The boxes will stack neatly inside each other, much like a tower of banquet chairs.

#5. Then there’s the whole ‘environmental’ deal

• Sharp statistics measure that landfills are overwhelmingly filled with cardboard boxes.
• While much of it, thanks to our mutual OCD, will head instead to the recycling depot – recycling will still consume energy.

These ‘last a lifetime’ green moving boxes promise they’ll take all the abuse you can hit them with. (Heh – didn’t they hear about Paolo’s laminate durability test?) Moving men, apparently, love them too – meaning you get a happier, more efficient crew.

#6. Best of all? The death of ‘odds and ends’.

It’s inevitable. Paolo can’t stand that fact that I never learn. (Even though this time I’m trying to move without clutter). The detritus you never knew lived in your apartment. Old textbooks, random shoes, cleaning supplies – it’s guaranteed to be the most random hodgepodge of crap and there will  be masses of it.

Are you really meant to hand-carry this, with the tennis racquet, 6 rolls of duct tape and bamboo-filled vase? (Me – last move – one of many bad moving ideas). Certainly not. Another plastic moving box will be happy to relieve you of the crap and you can be on your way. I’m intrigued. And will definitely be firing off some emails for quotes.

My only reservation: cardboard is free.

Anyone? Yay/nay on the green moving box movement?

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Full photo credit to a loves dc and Jason Cartwright via Flickr Creative Commons