Originally published at: Here's Mark Rober's Glitter Bomb Package 4.0 | Boing Boing
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This man is a hero.
What impresses me the most is that he’s able to make meaningful improvements year after year.
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The full video is great, but the funniest thing to me was the almost as an aside build of the planter that would eat the package at night. It was like some kind of Dadaist nightmare.
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Glitter contains microplastics, which can find their way into rivers and oceans, taking many years to degrade.
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I don’t have time to review the video and confirm, but I believe it’s briefly mentioned that he uses biodegradable glitter.
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As well, I have to point out that biodegradable glitter is a misnomer/inaccurate, it takes several decades to break down, while it remains in the environment.
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Yet those highly-efficient San Francisco smash-and-grab thieves managed to get away Scott-free again. Hopefully his personal guarantee that he’ll get them next time comes to fruition.
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In addition, if we’re really thinking about it, the entire bomb is a mass of plastic and electronics. Throwing away four cell phones and a bunch of machinery every time someone steals it and gets rid of it probably isn’t great for the environment either. I’m assuming he recovers it when possible (because why wouldn’t he?), but that can’t be 100% of the time and surely it gets damaged often.
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You just sent me down a rabbit hole looking into this. Apparently you’re right and most glitters that claim to be biodegradable still suck. But according to this article one brand is kinda OK:
Rober does a lot of research on his work so hopefully he is using the most responsible brand.
Edit: but if he made the switch to irradiated glitter then maybe he could track down those crafty thieves a bit easier after they ditch the packages.
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Yep he mentioned it has GPS in it and can track it down. Plus I think it says something to the effect of the police have been alerted which causes them to ditch it for recovery.
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But no matter the case, it’s a completely valid use for a hobbyist who makes a small amount intending to draw attention to the issue of package theft and support creative engineering/STEM. Much bigger fish to fry (cosmetics industry).
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He should just get rid of the glitter and fart spray and just fling actual biodegradable poo.
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The fart spray is to make the person want to get rid of it promptly, thus increasing the chance of recovering it.
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My Dear Wife says the same of me.
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Perhaps for the next iteration he could just ditch the glitter and release a swarm of biodegradable wasps.
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Still waiting for the prosecution of a single person based on this extremely expensive Youtube prank.
Somehow, he films dozens of crimes IN PROGRESS, and yet every criminal goes free, albeit with a short cleanup sentence to serve.
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While I applaud his creativity and engineering skills, this does very little to deter porch pirates and as you said, this is not leading to any actual prosecutions either.
Package theft is the ultimate opportunity crime. Extremely low risk/high reward. They’re almost casual in how they go about swiping stuff. They know that even if they get caught nothing substantial is going to happen. Police have other priorities and victims usually are able to easily get refunds or replacements.
I have a wayward niece who funds her drug addiction via porch piracy (among other crimes). She calls the people who she steals from “donors”.
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Yes and surely this multi-year project is the cause of the vast majority of that pollution and contamination, and your comments and ire are correctly focused here on this easily-targeted use case, and not on the many schools, parents, craft stores, and indeed manufacturers of glitter themselves.
Thank you for focusing on the important part of this ongoing project to advocate for the frequency of package theft and how much energy, time and money is wasted in redelivery of these packages in the first place - the amount of glitter used!
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One reason he started doing this prank in the first place is that he found the police were unwilling or unable to go after the thieves. So instead he took up a hobby that serves the porch pirates a small measure of payback and serves everyone else a measure of entertainment.
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