November 2008

Over this past weekend, my mother and I presented a paper at the American Popular Association Conference. It was so much fun to work with my mom in a professional setting. (We presented on the material culture of film, using the two Father of the Bride movies and looking at the changing role of fatherhood in America). The technology provided by the conference was basically nil (although everyone was really really nice) and that meant a number of last minute trips to the local Best Buy. It also saw me in sitting in our rental car desperately trying to open clamshell packaging of our newly purchased speakers. While it was practically tear-inducing in the moment, it is now comical and I’m really without words to describe the contortions and pure force of will it took to open the packaging without damaging the contents or myself. All of this is a long way of saying that this morning when I logged into Amazon.com (I’m in the market for a new small camera) I was THRILLED to see they are working with suppliers to reduce “wrap rage” and packaging waste. I think that it will take the leadership of companies like Amazon (and the support of consumers like us) to reduce the environmental impact of the insane amounts of packaging currently used.

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