The green movement is going mainstream – corporations are throwing their weight behind it – from Google leading the effort in installing solar panels, GE designing more energy efficient locomotives or light bulbs to every company encouraging consumers to get electronic bills/statements instead of the old fashioned paper ones in the mail. I have been big fan of recycling for years, having migrated from a country (India) where there was no abundance of anything at least when I moved in the early 90’s.
I just discovered this company EarthFriendlyMoving that designs moving boxes called Recopacks that are completely made out of recycled material and can be reused a whole lot. I have seen similar boxes during office moves, but I am not sure if they were made out of recycled material like Recopacks are. Check it out – if nothing else their website has a lot of useful information.
If you are in Southern California and are planning to move, you should definitely give them a good look. After all renting a single Recopack only cost a buck a week.
The recycling stats are worth noting: Every 100 Recopacks prevents 256 pounds of waste entering the landfill. This translates into 7,400 hard-to-recycle plastic bottles, 600 used diapers (yikes, they use diapers?), 83 pounds of paper, 13 pounds of hydro carbons,and 64 pounds of carbon dioxide – plus it saves 3 healthy trees from being cut down to make the cardboard boxes that you would need.
The company is planning expansion within the rest of California this year and nationwide next year.
Now the product management aspect of this – do you think any customer said I wish I did not have to use cardboard boxes? Probably not – they probably asked for better cardboard boxes because of the problems taping them after filling them, trouble finding the right size, finding enough of them, having to drive to the store to pick them up and then having to dispose them of after the move – all real world pain points plus of course the negative impact on the environment.
This company to me looked at the bigger picture of moving and decided to solve this problem differently and doing it in a way that is very environment friendly. I would wager that we have a real product winner here provided the company executes well.
Is Recopack an original idea or are there others like them?
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Software Product Manager by Gopal Shenoy 