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Listen closely.

Hear that? It just arrived in the mail.

It’s not a gift. It is the packing material that protected the gift.

And assuming we continue to get to the porch before the pirates do, we will end up with piles of plastic peanuts, bags filled with air, or this thing that’s actually a new innovation: A plastic bag filled with peanuts AND air, which, according to the label, can be recycled as-is … by MAILING it back to the manufacturer!

Which is a genius idea because when you mail packing material, it protects itself!

Certainly better than what happened last Christmas when I had enough loose plastic to fill a 40-gallon trash bag. It got to the point where I would try to hold off mailing my packages until gifts began arriving so I could just pour the incoming peanuts into MY outgoing gift boxes.

Of course, timing is critical … and sometimes you have to send out a bunch of super-delicate post-Christmas gifts around mid-January to unload all your bubble wrap – AS WELL AS to show how much you care.

So, what’s the solution? Pretty simple: The mail order industry should pack things the way you pack souvenirs after a trip – stuff the box with socks and T-shirts. Everybody can use them, and if they’re a little worn or ugly, who cares? We’re all stuck at home anyway.

Listen to Seattle’s Morning News weekday mornings from 5 – 9 a.m. on ³ÉÈËXÕ¾ Radio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.