THIS IS AN OPEN LETTER TO ANYONE WHO DID, OR MAY IN THE FUTURE SEND, GIVE OR OTHERWISE BEQUEATH TO ME A GIFT – either at Christmas, or for a birthday or just because I am an unusually nice guy.

I know that when you order stuff to send to me you don’t have much control over how it is packed for shipping. But wait: I have a suggestion for you in just such a case. Later. 

I am fed up with the packing and shipping process currently practiced by those people from whom you order those wonderful gifts to send to me – an unusually nice guy.

I refer, of course, to the packing materials used to keep things from bumping into each other and breaking. First on my list of cursed packing materials is PLASTIC PEANUTS! They are not peanuts. If they were I’d shut up. i love peanuts and would love to get some. I don’t break out in hives or go into some kind of anaphylactic shock. I just love peanuts. You can take the plastic kind and stuff them anywhere your imagination suggests. They spill and then become irretrievable either running away or sticking to your fingers in the wrong places. I would gladly shoot between the eyes the jerk who invented them and thought he should get the Nobel Prize for shipping innovation.

Next on my hit list is the PLASTIC FORM FITTING BUBBLES that require a chain saw to open. I have come “that” close to slicing my hand, finger, or wrist trying to open something sent to me by someone who “loves” me. I am given pause to wonder. The last thing I opened from this kind of entombment went flying across the room, benefiting from humongous stored up energy in the bending and un-releasing enclosure, and banged against the wall, shattering an innocent yet non-essential little bowl that no one will miss.

But that’s not the point. The point is this: It causes ill will. it causes people who normally don’t cuss to cuss. It raises blood pressure. It causes injury. It makes people entertain fantasies of vacuum packing in bullet proof plastic the guy, and to be fair, or the woman who invented this horror and laying them out in the sunshine to boil while their friends and families try futilely to open their enclosures.

Now comes those little PLASTIC AIR BAGS. They seem so hi-tec and clean. They are in fact used by a lot of hi-tec companies to further their image of being clean and green. Excuse me, but plastic is not clean or hi-tec if you are thinking about the carbon footprint thing. It is plastic. Petroleum based. The same thing those “peanuts” mentioned above are made of. Oh, I know, we are told that these things are biodegradable. Sure. They become dust in 16,000,004 years. Whew, I thought we’d have to put up with that pile of crap for ever.

What to do? Here is is. Have all that stuff sent to you and you repack it in – are you listening? Newspaper! It does become dust in short order. It can be used to start your fires in your heating stoves. It can be safely put in landfills and even re-used for – packing! Yeah, well I know what you are saying. “I read the paper on line and don’t have any news paper. Go to the grocery – you still eat don’t you – and on the way out pick up an arm load of those weekly throwaway papers. Just the ticket. Then re-pack MY gifts with that and YOU deal with all that garbage that really should be sent back to the people who sell that stuff and let them deal with it

I know – it’s going to be a burden at first. But you will come to it sooner than you think. It’s the right thing to do. You will have this wonderful feeling one morning deep within, that you are actually doing something of lasting good – at last.

I appreciate your support. Be well, and stay tuned.

Jerry Henderson