It seems that UPS stores will gladly take off your hands:

- packing peanuts 

- air-filled plastic pillows

- cardboard boxes

I just dropped off a bag full of polystyrene peanuts (which I couldn't have disposed of properly at all - polystyrene foam is a bitch, and even specialized recycling places will not take peanuts) and air-filled bags, along with the big cardboard box that contained them. They were all taken in with a smile.

I suppose they will get reused directly to pack things again. 

I heard of this tip while browsing the web,
made a quick phone call to the closest UPS store to confirm that was true,
et voila!

ps: do make that phone call beforehand though, to make sure your local store does that as well.

objects we can stop mass-producing right now #1: pencil holders

cleaned-up jam pots

A pencil holder needs to do one thing: hold pencils.

Which means, pretty much anything, ANYTHING will do the job quite right as long as it's able to more or less contain things: re-used metal cans, glass jars, cardboard tubes, etc.
Plus: a lot of these look good too. AND, you can throw them away with the regular trash if you move out!

So basically, any company manufacturing 'professional' pencil holders could stop right away, the world wouldn't miss them, and an entire branch of useless mass-produced objects would disappear (and the associated waste stream at the same time).