ALL ART BURNS

Yet another surprise in the mail bag.

WTF? An expanded polystyrene (EPS) box from Teague? What manner of prank is this? Did someone I know get hired at Teague and put me on their elite client list? (Well, not too elite, it is made of generic EPS and not Styrofoam(TM) brand EPS.)

Um. Ok. A EPS box with a little booklet inside it.

A little booklet showing me their work in hopes I’ll hire them. I’m a software engineer by day and an ID student by night. Why are they sending me this? Did they send this to every student member of IDSA?

The box lets me know that it “can be recycled”. Well, lots of things “can be recycled” if you live in the right part of the world, but how many of us live in a place with easy recycling of block EPS? In the back of the book there’s a note saying I should call a 800 number or go to a website to find out where to recycle it, and that if I can’t recycle it, I can mail it back to Teague and they’ll recycle it:

No joke. Apparently I am either supposed to throw it away, figure out where to recycle it, or pay postage to send it back to Teague.

Looking at epspackaging.org, the nearest place that takes EPS is 45 miles away. I should burn how many gallons of gas to recycle something I didn’t need or want in the first place?

Why not just send me the little booklet in a fancy little cardboard box? Or better still, not send me anything at all until I’ve expressed interest in their services? What’s the fully-loaded cost in terms of natural resources of developing this little piece of advertising and shipping it out to who knows how many people? How many of these boxes will get recycled? How much fuel was burned by the vehicles delivering these boxes?

Perhaps the actual content in the booklet have been better delivered to me via the web. The booklet is smaller than a CD insert so the type is very tiny and the spine won’t lay flat. Even if I wanted to read this it’d be difficult to do so.

Thanks, Teague!

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