ADDISON – It looks like a torture chamber for cardboard and bubble wrap. At a lab in suburban Chicago, UPS Inc. tests new packaging designs by dropping, shaking and smashing boxes with brutal-looking equipment. The point is to see what type of packaging can withstand the trip from supplier to customer, protecting the delicate products inside.

From cupcakes to live crickets, products of a mind-boggling variety are now shipped by online retailers to consumers around the world. As the holiday shipping season throttles up, companies want their products to arrive safely. But they also demand sustainable materials for their packaging so they can boast of being green. On top of that, they want to reduce their costs.

The UPS Package Design and Testing Lab helps with all that, crunching and squeezing prototype packaging for 750 businesses a year and designing innovative new boxes for an additional 50 customers.