Bloggers secure victory over Dell packaging

The power of the blogosphere to instigate changes in firms' environmental policies was again underlined last week after IT giant Dell responded to criticism of the packaging it uses to ship some products with a pledge to use smaller packages where possible.

On Earth Day last month, the company faced criticism from a number of influential blogs – including The Consumerist, Treehugger and Gizmodo – over its use of large packages to send relatively small items.

The blogs carried articles criticising the company's wastefulness and photos of a 2GB USB stick that had been shipped to a customer in a box that is "about 100 times too big".

The criticism prompted a response from Dell, which last week insisted that it had contacted the vendor responsible for shipping the USB stick and instructed it to cut the amount of packaging it uses. Dell also launched a new initiative to optimise packaging across its portfolio.

Writing on the company's official blog, Todd Dwyer, community liaison for the environment at Dell, said the firm had already issued a directive to its suppliers to use envelopes for small items such as USB sticks.

He added that the company had also requested an "optimisation analysis of product volume to box size" and introduced a new metric on which to judge its suppliers' performance based on the amount of void space contained in the packaging they use.

Dwyer also expressed Dell's "sincere gratitude… to everyone who pointed out this irregularity to us" and urged those with ideas on how the company can improve its packaging practices to make suggestions through its IdeaStorm forum.