A gardener has slammed Wilko for 'absolutely ridiculous waste' after delivering ten plant pots each in their own giant box - leaving a seven-foot wall in her living room. Angie Evans and her husband, Martin, 38, ordered ten plant pots from the homeware retailer, only for them to arrive each in their own large individual box, ironically marked 'recycle me'.
The 34-year-old then showed how five pots could be stacked together and would fit into a single box - meaning that a whopping eight boxes were unnecessary, a level of waste the IT analyst branded 'absolutely ridiculous'. Angie said that when their usual delivery man arrived at their cottage in Eynsford, Kent, in May and began to unload the boxes she quickly realised Wilko had not learned their lesson from her last encounter with the retailer - when they did the same thing.
Angie explained: "He said, 'I've got ten parcels for you', and I thought 'What did I order?' Then as soon as he took a box out I thought, 'That's insane. They've done it again', because it also happened last year. That was the only other time I'd bought from Wilko. I'm a keen gardener, and the same thing happened [last time]: I bought ten plant pots and they came in five boxes, so it wasn't as bad as this time but still quite wasteful.
"I was beside myself. I felt like I had to apologise to him but he said he'd had it before with Wilko, where he'd had deliveries of several items spread across multiple boxes. He had to move the boxes around the back of his van all day because there were so many of them.
"He said, 'Did you order air? Because these weigh nothing'. He was a bit baffled thinking there was nothing in them. Then he stacked them up and they filled our living room; we live in quite a small cottage. They pretty much reached the ceiling."
Not only was Angie stunned at the 'insane' amount of packaging but found the fact that each box said 'recycle me', 'ironic to say the least'. She said: "I think they have a responsibility to the environment. As a large company, along with conglomerates like Amazon, they need to change and get on board. I can't understand why they wouldn't reduce it because I imagine it would cost less for them to actually ship items. I can't imagine it was cheap sending ten boxes like that. It's very inefficient.
"They need to be environmentally forward, because they will just fall behind if they don't adapt. I think there'll be policies put in place for waste in the future, and they should get ahead of the game really."
The mammoth task of unpacking the boxes was only the start for the climate-conscious pair, as they then had to dispose of the mountain of packaging responsibly. Angie said: "It took me two days just to build up the courage to unbox them, and then it took me about an hour to get everything unboxed along with all the packaging and recycling.
"I also had two recycling bags full of plastic from the packaging that was in the boxes. Then I had to take the boxes up to the bottle bank and put them in the recycling there.
"As a customer experience it's painful. I was already feeling a bit guilty for having got plastic, but then to have them arrive in that - I planted a tree the next week in my garden.
"I love one clothing company because for every order they plant a tree and notify you once it's planted. So even just doing something that's more environmentally forward, as a company, is a mentality that everyone should get on board with."
A spokesperson for Wilko said: "We acknowledge there is still more to be done towards reducing unnecessary packaging, and we are working to address this. Customer feedback is valuable to us and this customer’s experience has been shared with the relevant department."
