Amazon Redesigned Its Boxes To Please Your Cat

Its no secret that Amazon sends out a ton of packages every year, and that produces a lot of cardboard box waste. Amazon has decided to take steps toward fixing that by rolling out new shipping boxes that not only use less material, but can also be repurposed into other things. As the saying goes: "reduce, reuse, recycle."

Obviously, you didn't need Amazon's permission to turn delivery boxes into different creations, but the key difference here is that Amazon is actually lending a hand by publishing directions on its website. If you head over to Amazon's DayOne Blog, you'll find a post detailing these new boxes, complete with instructions on how to turn them into a box fort, a cat condo, a windmill for a mini golf course, a box car, a rocket, and a robot costume.

The instructions aren't super in-depth, but they're detailed enough to get you there. Many of them require multiple boxes, so you might want to hold onto to the packaging from your next several Amazon deliveries if you want to try one of these DIY projects for yourself.

As far as the boxes themselves are concerned, Amazon director of customer packaging Kim Houchens told USA Today that this is the next step in efforts Amazon has been taking to reduce waste since 2008. Houchens told the paper that it has managed to cut the weight of its packaging by 33%, eliminating the equivalent of 1.5 billion shipping boxes throughout the years.

The company, unfortunately, didn't give precise statistics on how these new boxes compare to the previous ones. In any case, these boxes will begin shipping out to customers this week, so keep an eye out for them.