Box Bussing Business

Bussing in the sense of my days of bussing tables at Shoney’s Restaurant.  This business would be about doing a reverse Amazon or Doordash type service, rather than delivering items, you're picking up (bussing) - specifically, used boxes.  To me, this is something that Amazon, UPS and others should already have a plan for.  While their trucks are emptying their boxed loads throughout the day, this would make room for stops to pick up used boxes. 

• Maybe a credit would be issued to the folks donating their boxes back to the shipper, or maybe the satisfaction of doing the right thing would be payment enough?

• Or people would be willing to spend more money on “Free shipping” to cover the expense of recycled boxes. Operationally, the following areas of the “resupply” chain would have to be contemplated

  • Payment to the service picking up the used boxes (less of an expense if Amazon, UPS or other shippers just pick up their old boxes)

  • Processing the used boxes (e.g. removing old tape, fixing, etc)

  • Sorting the used boxes

  • If a 3^rd party is doing the processing of the used boxes, there would be a cost to deliver the boxes to the shipper.

Lots of boxes - conservatively over 15 Million boxes globally per day.

What’s the challenge?

• We need to stop filling our land fills with items that can be reused.

How does this innovation help?

• By reusing boxes used to ship products, it reduce natural resources being used to create new boxes and saves space in the land fill.  It also creates new jobs or provides more reasons to hire new or repurpose existing human skills.