FORMER Taggart star Colin McCreadie reckons opening packages from Amazon is murder.
The exasperated actor took to Twitter to complain about the mound of boxes and paper used by the online retailer to send five mugs.
His extraordinary picture showed at least four boxes and what appeared to be several metres of brown paper.
He tweeted: “I do love Amazon, but check out the packaging for five mugs – totally ridiculous.”
Despite the mass of packaging, McCreadie reckons the five mugs were still put together in just one of the boxes.
A Twitter follower replied: “It looks like a game of pass the parcel that went badly wrong.”
Alison Johnstone, Green MSP for the Lothians, called on Amazon to review their methods.
She said: “There’s clearly been a failure of common sense here and Amazon will want to make sure it is not wasting its own resources and costing everyone more.
“Shoppers are forced to pay hundreds of pounds each year for unnecessary packing and I want to see big retailers as part of the solution rather than the problem.”
Jane Bickerstaffe, director of The Industry Council for Packaging and the Environment (INCPEN), said: “It certainly looks like the mugs were not well protected even though there is far more packaging than is needed.
“I’m not looking to excuse it but there are a number of reasons why some things ordered for home delivery are badly packaged – sometimes with too much packaging but also with too little.”
More than 10 million tonnes of packaging is produced every year in the UK and one tonne of packaging is made from 17 trees.
This means that every year in Britain around 17 million trees have ended up as cardboard boxes.
The packaging industry and manufacturers of cardboard boxes is also worth around £3.9billion.
A spokesman for Amazon UK said: “Amazon delivers millions of packages every month in the UK and our aim is to ensure that customers receive products in perfect condition whilst using the least amount of packaging possible.
“We have a packaging feedback program, which allows customers to provide direct feedback on the packaging of their order as well as upload images.
“In addition, we have developed a software program that determines the right-sized box for any given item to be shipped to a customer based on that item’s dimensions and weight.”
