Boxing Day

SUSTAINABLE LIVING | by CELESTE TELL

MOVING? GOING OFF TO COLLEGE? IT’S THAT TIME OF YEAR. We’re taking our oldest off to college and a friend is moving clear across the country. So moving is front and center for us right now as we contemplate the traditional moving ritual of collecting cardboard boxes: Scrounging as many used ones as you can and buying the rest from a supplier.

Either way, cardboard boxes are as ubiquitous to moving day as gasoline is to fueling cars. Which is to say, maybe there is an alternative? Enter the green moving-box movement. A little online digging pulled up four companies renting high-quality, reusable plastic moving boxes. You rent the boxes, fill them with your stuff, move, unpack and return the boxes so someone else can use them.

Green. Two companies advertise their boxes as made from recycled plastic, while all four emphasize the value of not cutting down trees to move your stuff. Either way it’s a win-win.

Cost-effective. Pricing for three weeks of box rental ranges from competitive to less than the cost of purchasing new cardboard boxes.

Convenient. Order online and the boxes are delivered to your door. Call them to pick up once you have unpacked at your new location.

Some options:

• Karmaboxx and Frogbox serve the greater Seattle area. Frogbox also serves greater Vancouver, B.C.
• Rent-A-Green Box serves the greater Los Angeles and Orange County metro area.
• Rentacrate is a nationwide operation with multiple offices in sixteen locations across the country.

Packrat alert: Since you are paying for the boxes by the week, you do have to unpack the boxes within a reasonable period of time. No leaving things in boxes for two or three years.