I readily admit that some packaging is necessary for our economy to function – I’d have a hard time getting a gallon of milk home from the store without a container of some kind – but let’s consider for a moment the packaging that comes with men’s dress shirts:

1. An outer plastic bag
2. A sheet of paperboard inside to keep the shirt pleasantly flat
3. A cylinder of paperboard or plastic in the collar to keep it straight
4. A bit of plastic in the opening in the collar, covering the topmost button, for no readily apparent reason
5. Two pins holding the collar in place
6. Between two and six pins holding other parts of the shirt in place
7. Between one and three tags affixed to various parts of the shirt with sizing and pricing information (not the label that’s sewn into the shirt, but separate, removable labels)

Not one of these elements serves any practical function.  It all exists to make shirts look presentable in stores.  The cost of that presentation is not only harm to the environment through wasted resources, but also wasted time when buyers have to undo all those elements for every new shirt.

Manufacturers need to eliminate every single packaging element, leaving only the material consumers actually want: a new shirt.

Stores can handle this new arrangement in (at least) two different ways.  The easiest is to put shirts in bins, with samples on display on mannequins, or even pinned up if they want.  Shoppers could then pick out the sizes and colors they want.

Most people would probably say that’s inelegant or low class.  Fine.  “High class” establishments can do what they’ve always done for sweaters, pants, ties, and myriad other forms of sartorial essentials: fold piles of shirts neatly on tables.  Yes, shoppers will mess them up, so the same clerks straightening sweaters will now also need to straighten the shirts.

Such a change would be so easy to implement that tolerating the status quo is irresponsible.