It’s Earth Day, and that means taking time to reflect on humanity’s impact on our one-and-only planet. Because Kast-A-Way Swimwear accepts orders in brick-and-mortar stores as well as online, we have a large volume of items coming in an out on a regular basis. In the spirit of Earth Day, I wanted to assess where we stand on the eco-friendly spectrum in terms of swimsuit packaging for shipments. I also put my web surfing skills to use by rounding up some of the EPIC FAILures for excessive packaging that I could find online.

First, let’s talk swimsuits. Luckily, swimsuits don’t have any moving or fragile parts that might require additional insulation. That’s not to say swimsuits are carelessly shipped – the packaging must still protect against water damage, include a flat surface for a shipping label and tracking barcode, and prevent the suit from being torn or stretched when coming in contact with other packages.

Suits arrive in large boxes that contain small individual boxes for each suit. That may seem like a lot of boxes, but these suits are going to be individually sold and shipped so they need their own container. Packaging is reduced on the manufacturer’s end because little to no padding or insulation is needed to ship swimsuits. Each Speedo swimsuit box is made of 100% recycled paper products.

Next, shipping the box requires a light-weight, waterproof method that will protect the suit from being damaged in the process. The result: polyethylene mailing envelope. This envelope is durable and perfectly fits the dimensions of the box. The ‘poly’ mailer is made of LDPE (low density polyethylene) and can be recycled wherever plastic recycle code No. 4 is accepted.

Overall, I’d say the swimsuit package and shipping materials score fairly high on a hypothetical appropriate amount of packaging scale. Now let’s check out some of the worst examples of conservative packaging. The epic excessive package stories found online:

1. HP ships Dual In-line Memory Module (DIMM)

Posted on theregister.co.uk, Hewlett Packard sent a large box filled with airbags to ship a small computer chip.

2. Office Basics ships one pen…

Posted on badluckcity.wordpress.com, this office supply (singular) arrived courtesy of Office Basics.

3. Individually wrapped bananas

Posted by Son of Five Rivers Blog, these bananas are individually packed on a polystyrene plate covered in plastic wrap!

4. Camera memory card from Amazon.com

This picture, also from theregister.co.uk, shows how Amazon shipped a memory card for a digital camera.

5. Playbill and CD in a HUGE box

There is actually a Flickr photostream just for over-packaged products. Here are the steps it took one user to unpack a CD and playbill from a huge box.