Taking a cue from anyone under 10 years old who can come up with endless imaginative uses for an empty cardboard box, Samsung is now making it easy for anyone to recycle or upcycle its TV packaging into other useful household items like magazine racks and fancy cat houses.
As competition between flat screen TV makers pushes those companies to release larger and larger sets to woo buyers, the packaging used to safely ship those TVs has grown along with them, leaving consumers with mountains of cardboard to dispose of afterward. In order to help reduce its carbon footprint, Samsung will start using packaging made from “eco-friendly corrugated cardboard” on its higher-end TVs including The Serif, The Frame, and the rotating, portrait mode-friendly, The Sero. The company didn’t go into detail about what makes the type of cardboard its using more eco-friendly, but presumably, and hopefully, it will include a higher percentage of recycled materials.
But even recycling requires machinery and factories for breaking down materials to the point where they can be used for manufacturing again. To that end, Samsung is now making it easier to simply upcycle its TV packaging. The cardboard is now perforated with a dot matrix pattern that makes it easier to cut up and reassemble into other objects. Scanning a QR code on the boxes with a mobile device grants access to instruction manuals for turning the cardboard into magazine racks, shelving, end tables, or a cat house your feline will turn to shredded paper in a matter of hours.
Once assembled, the various cardboard pieces appear to be designed to keep the Samsung branding front and centre, so this appears to also be an initiative to turn even more of your home into a billboard advertising Samsung. But that’s nothing a can of spray paint, or a few minutes with a Sharpie marker, can’t fix. Just remember that come moving day, you’re going to have to find another way to safely transport your giant screen TV, because its original packaging is now full of magazines or hairballs.