TV & Internet...

Tired of buying products that take a chainsaw to unwrap? Amazon.com feels your pain. They've introduced a new initiative to sell products with "Frustration-Free Packaging" -- all designed to be easily opened and create less waste.

Amazon says the products -- less than two dozen so far -- use "recyclable boxes that are easy to open and free of excess materials such as hard plastic clamshell cases, plastic bindings, and wire ties. The product itself is exactly the same—we’ve just streamlined the packaging."

Early products in this line include several toys -- both for kids and computer users.

One toy -- Fisher Price's Imaginext Adventures Pirate Ship -- really shows off how this initiative greens the products by eliminating "36 inches of wire ties, 1,576.5 square inches of package inserts, and 36.1 square inches of printed carton materials. Also eliminated are 175.25 square inches of PVC blisters, 3.5 square inches of ABS molded styrene, and two plastic fasteners." Wow!

Other items don't save quite as much packaging, but they do make a difference. A Microsoft Wireless Notebook Mouse "ships in an easy-to-open recyclable box, eliminating the heavy plastic "clamshell" found in traditional packaging."

Amazon's really thinking like an Internet retailer here. Most of the packaging they're eliminating is designed to protect products in a physical retail setting, either to keep them from breaking on the shelf or to prevent them from being shoplifted. Amazon doesn't need to worry about either situtation. As a result, you -- and the planet -- get the benefit.