Amazon.com's green idea is brown

Classic brown cardboard will replace elaborate plastic packaging for some Amazon.com items.

(Credit: Amazon.com)

Sometimes the greenest technology improvement is going back to the old low-tech option.

Amazon.com announced Monday it's working with retailers to cut back on the packaging you'll need to open to get to your goods.

The Seattle-based company plans to start shipping items in plain brown cardboard boxes, instead of putting a pre-boxed or plastically sealed item inside another Amazon box. The cardboard box will have Amazon, and in some cases the retailer's name, on the front.

Memory cards, for example, are often sold in disproportionately large clear plastic packaging to prevent shoplifting at physical stores. Transcend's memory cards when bought via Amazon will be shipped in a recycled cardboard envelope. Children's toys, such as a Fisher-Price pirate ship set, will be shipped in a plain brown box with cardboard padding and a plastic bag holding the toy people and whatnot.

So, in addition to being less annoying to open, the new packaging will also be more environmentally friendly, according to Amazon.

Amusingly, Amazon refers to the change as its "Frustration-Free Packaging Initiative." (How many companies acknowledge that they may have been frustrating you in the past?)

Consumers can plan to see the change immediately in the U.S., while international shoppers will have to stick it out with the "frustrating packaging" until early 2009.

But not everything you order will be easy to open. Amazon is starting with only 19 products from Microsoft, Fisher-Price, Mattel, and Transcend.

No doubt, the packaging change is also a way for the companies involved to save on materials and shipping costs.

Fisher-Price's Imaginext Adventures Pirate Ship will come like this.

(Credit: Amazon.com)

Amazon.com is getting rid of its box-inside-a-box shipping method for some items.

(Credit: Amazon.com)