Here's your box, Sir

That's what happens when you try to do the right thing?

You order refills to avoid tossing the pen and just getting a new one, and then they send an entire box with lots of hot air and its own packaging slip for two ink cartridges. (The other four came in the box beneath.)

The money question really is whether it does pay for Staples to send UPS guys out on their trucks with empty dead trees.

If not, give them each a Climate Corps Fellow to squeeze out the waste, pick up free money, and save a few trees in the meantime.

If this does make business sense at scale, you know there's something rotten with how we treat the planet and price our resources, and it goes much beyond pen refills. (Don't get me started on the multiple, half-empty Fresh Direct boxes we get with every order.)

Put value on trees—not just the dead ones—and stop treating the atmosphere as a free sewer, and I bet Staples will reconsider its packaging strategy in no time.