As part of giffgaff’s ethos of being environmentally friendly, I feel that the idea to change how we look at our SIM packaging is required. My focus in this idea is the plastic SIM holder users receive to show the activation code, and then house the SIM.
What can be done?
It’s simple, this extra space is not needed at all, and we could shrink the plastic holder by half and still have sufficient space needed for the plastic holder to serve its purpose. Shrinking this would make things different; only one other network orange has done this, as you will see with the image below:
What would this mean for giffgaff?
- Half the amount of waste
- Would make the company more sustainable, and a much greener business
- Would expand on giffgaff’s ethos of being green, and efficient
- Would reduce the weight of SIM packages
- Enable giffgaff to ship more SIMs per envelope
- Overall, the production costs would be far less than producing SIM cases double the size.
If we was to reduce the Size of the SIM package, it would indeed save giffgaff money, I also think that it adds a more unique approach on how things are looked at. Obviously giffgaff are extraordinary, they’re different, so to see this change would most certainly show the idea of this.
Size does matter – And using the smaller SIM cases would overall reduce costs. The only issue as it stands is the number of batches of the original size we have. This isn’t much of a problem, as they’ve already done the damage, giffgaff have paid for this, if the idea was to be implemented, we could see this happen when the old batches have all gone.
Looking at the scale of the issue, more than 2.9 billion SIM cards weighing 11,600 tonnes were shipped to mobile operators across the globe in 2008* – Giffgaff could change this. Orange have already started the process, and have received recognition for doing such thing.
I have gone and got an Orange reduced SIM holder, and taken a photo in comparison to giffgaff's below:
*Statistics taken from: http://newsroom.orange.co.uk
Kudo this idea if you like it, I think this change would be great, and save giffgaff more money.
I'll keep you updated.
on
Great idea james.
So much of what we receive/buy is totally over-packaged. It drives me crazy! 
This seems like a small thing, but over the months/years, it would add up to a significant reduction in waste.
And as a forward thinking company, this is something that giffgaff should be looking to implement when it is suitable to do so.
hazel22
on
I'll keep you updated.
