With the cult-like hype around all things “green” these days, it seems like everyone is hopping on the bandwagon.

Sensing a marketing opportunity, companies are embracing the new culture of conspicuous planet-saving.

This week, a gift from a relative arrived in which Macy’s placed a postcard-sized note explaining that the package was shipped with “Earth-loving packing material” designed to “protect our environment.” Aside from the small matter of unnecessarily using the Earth’s resources to explain to me how Macy’s is saving the Earth’s resources, there was something rather comedic about the company’s presentation.

The gift arrived in a box over 2 feet tall. Width and length-wise, the box was 19 inches. It was a pretty big box, so when I picked it up, I expected something heavy. I was a bit surprised to discover how light it was, at least until I opened it up.

You see, the self-congratulatorily eco-friendly Macy’s filled this huge box with an item that was only one inch tall, 10 inches wide, and 15 inches deep. This wasn’t exactly a fragile item, either; it was essentially a block of wood. Macy’s could have put a stamp right on the item itself with no packaging and sent it out without much chance of damage.

So, the one inch tall item had 25x as much vertical space as necessary, along with an extra 9 inches of padding in one dimension and an extra 4 inches in another. Several dozen more of the shipped item could have fit in the box comfortably.

But after realizing the extent of the wasted space, I was quite relieved to pull the card out of the box telling me how environmentally friendly it all was.