During last year, due to the pandemic, e-commerce and B2C shipments have skyrocketed, forcing logistics services to face some of their most pressing problems. One of them is certainly how reliant we are on something as low-tech and unsustainable as the ubiquitous cardboard box. The boxes we use for shipping are certainly very cheap (and are a proven reliable solution) but they are mostly used once, quickly ending up in landfills all over the world. 
LivingPackets, a startup in Berlin, wants to change all that with “The Box”, a smart, sustainable shipping container that can be traced at any time and can be reused for at least a thousand of deliveries. The Box is design to be though and resistant; it includes a tracker, an e-ink screen to dynamically show the parcel’s shipping details, and an internal holder mechanism to keep in place and protect objects of many different shapes. Thanks to its smart features it can be tracked at all times, and it makes tampering and parcel theft a problem of the past. The new-generation shipping container is, of course, way more expensive than a single cardboard box, but it becomes potentially more economical than the cardboard alternative after a couple hundred times. Moreover, LivingPacket is not planning to sell The Box, instead wants to offer it to online retailers and companies “as a service”, with the final goal of building a circular economy of shipping.