Except its not free. This is the lie no-one seems to understand.
Every product you buy has a % set aside for marketing. No company is sitting there thinking “oh look, free money just fell from the sky. Lets advertise so more people can have free stuff” or “oh, profits are up, lets put all those profits into advertising so people get even more free stuff”
But people don’t see seem to understand that no-one in advertising has an unlimited hole of cash they dip into to pay to advertise on sites so they can browse the site for free, you pay for reddit, etc every time you buy products!
To be fair to Amazon, the problem for this might not actually be Amazon!
Everything I order is always overpackaged, be it plastic or cardboard/paper but while you have consumers who whine over the slightest scratch in the hope of getting it reduced, or even returned. I saw a review on some recycling buckets that they had ‘minor marks’ probably from manufacturing, and they were complaining about them when you’re just going to mark them through use. I bet there’s people who complain gardening/power tools have marks/scratches when as soon as you use it you’re going to scratch it.
So i’m guessing everything is overpackaged because no-one wants the hassle of people whining and returning things which likely costs more than wasting plastic so until consumers become less shitty and accept it and just be grateful it works, nothing will really change.
People just want the shiney, ‘feel good’ feeling as they pile more stuff they probably don’t really need on the credit card so maybe Amazon should add a “I’m not an a-hole shopper” so the rest of us who’d rather it be scratched than have to throw away all the wasted plastic/cardboard so long as it works as intended! 🤔😎