Ernie Smith is the proprietor of Tedium, a fun website that I've been reading for years. Lots of fascinating and often nerdy tidbits. I really enjoyed the most recent article about how the "paper or plastic" debate that we used to have (and still do to some degree) about shopping bags has now made its way into decisions about packaging, such as the stuff that's used to fill empty space when stuff is shipped to you in boxes (so that the stuff doesn't bang around in the box).
Paper Vs. Plastic: How A Grocery-Bag Debate Bled Into Packaging (tedium.co)
Oddly enough, another part of the packaging story (Amazon's new mailers with a new form of built-in padding) relates to this: How Cheese Curls Were Invented: Junk Food’s Happiest Accident (tedium.co)