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Comment by seanwilson | Hacker News Reader

I've always wondered why there couldn't be standard containers for products like jam, wine, butter etc. where the containers are designed to be easily washed and reused. Manufacturers could still create their own branded containers but would pay more somehow for doing so. Is there an obvious problem with this idea?

It's nuts that if you buy e.g. 4 bottles of wine they all have different bottle designs and if you optionally go through the effort of recycling them there might be some process involved where they're sent to another country, broken down, melted and then reformed it into new bottles at best. Just wash and reuse the bottle...?

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I really think this is one place where standards could be transformative for society.

Not only the obvious benefits, but standardized bottle shapes allow manufacturers of, say, refrigerators and furniture to tailor their wine racks/dairy drawers/etc to fit the standard product packages perfectly. This gets you more room in your fridge, and your living room... And then places like Amazon can tailor their boxes to perfectly fit the products too.

I noticed this when I went into a Japanese bookstore and saw that all the books were the same shape, even from different publishers, and the bookshelves were perfectly sized to fit them.

I don't know what kind of power brought that about (small homes?), but compared to a North American bookstore where it seems every book is fighting to be a different size and shape, to stick out from the shelf and stand taller than its neighbours.

Size and shape are powerful differentiators in marketing. Just think of how recognizable is a bottle of Coke compared to a generic soda. With the money most companies invest(ed) in this they will be very reluctant to go to a standardized model soon. But I guess eventually efficiency will win.

On the other hand, many container types are already de facto standardized: the lid of the pint of the cottage cheese and the quart of yogurt in my fridge right now, for example, are interchangeable even though they're from totally different dairies. Milk jugs and cartons are standardized. Cereal boxes, most pop bottles. Instant noodle bricks. The list isn't as long as the list of all possible products, but there are clearly benefits to standardization even in the absence of legislation mandating it.

There are only a handful of carton providers in the world (TetraPak is leading in carton in Europe, for example). Everyone uses or clones their machinery and designs.

Right, the point being that even absent the requirement to do so, dairies have figured out that it's cheaper/better to all use the same packaging.

Standardizing size and shape across brands does not appear to bother soda companies when they are packaging their product in cans. It doesn't seem unreasonable to require them to do the same for bottles in order to avoid mountains of plastic waste.

just ban plastic bottles.... cans work just fine.

Whole cans are easy to recycle, but doing so requires melting the metal back into stock and noxious chemicals to clean the metal.

That is all very expensive and environmentally unfriendly compared to potential for reuse of strong bottles.

Unless you force a redesign so that cans are reusable. (No more tab - instead a bottle cap, standard shape, no crushing, heavier, thicker, more expensive.)

I expect that soft drinks could easily be sold in a mini-keg form factor.

There exists aluminum bottles - Coke at one time sold their soda in them (I think it was some kind of commemorative edition or something like that).

That would have the same benefit as bottles: The ability to drink only part of the contents (like people do with water). The downside is that you can't see what is inside (an important factor for many people when they purchase - especially water).

There's the iconic Coke glass bottle, sure, but larger plastic beverage bottles have no discernible differences; same with cans, cardboard cartons, gallon jugs, even, for the most part, glass beer bottles.

We can ban different shapes, and the company will have to manage without this "differentiator".

Soda supplied to bars and restaurants in Denmark is usually in returnable bottles, including Fanta and Sprite (which elsewhere have shaped bottles). Coca Cola has a shape, but perhaps they sell enough to make it worthwhile to sort these from the usual shape.

https://www.bevco.dk/vand-og-mixer/sodavand/filter/flaske_ty...

(I drink close to zero soda at home. I know supermarkets sell cans and plastic bottles, both single-use but with a deposit. Possibly they sell the glass ones too. Most Danish beer is sold in a reusable bottle, foreign or microbrew beer just has a deposit but the bottle isn't reused.)

aluminum soda cans are a great example of standardized containers that work right now

Did until recently- notice that you can now get regular Diet Coke (and I assume other sodas) in mini cans and the new Diet Coke flavors come in skinny/tall cans only.

It's a funny thing - manufacturers of products want to "stand out" from competition - so they use unique shaped containers for their products...

...the same is true for the container companies! The want to stand out from their competition - so they introduce new products (containers) with new shapes or sizes for that purpose.

While I am certain that some product manufacturers can dictate or have custom-shaped containers for their brand only, for many they just choose an off-the-shelf version and brand using labeling and/or color.

So - while going with standard-sized containers would be great for a whole host of reasons, for the product manufacturers - both for what is being contained, and the containers themselves - it presents a huge loss of profit and market share.

I'm not sure what we can do about this; it seems like something that would have to be dictated by government, because I doubt any of the other stakeholders (not even the consumers) will sway the decision toward standardized containers.

Soda cans (and for that matter, soup cans) are almost the only examples we have (ok - plastic milk jugs and paper milk cartons?), but as you have noticed, that's starting to fragment (it had already started with beer cans long before).

The cans are almost never reused, instead they're recycled as the metal is too expensive to throw away and easier to render clean than almost every plastic.

It requires a lot of energy though to clean and melt. This recycling aluminum is not exactly green.

Recycling aluminum is very green when you compare the energy expenditure of recycling vs creating a net new can.

Of course a standard container would work just fine from the consumer's point of view and of course the companies will survive. The problem is for how long are they willing to delay this until losing the uniqueness of the shape is a better alternative to the social stigma attached to environmental carelessness.

And the Coke was just one example. A Google search for "iconic packaging" [0] will give you a lot of other examples of packaging so recognizable and unique that you can identify the product just by glancing at the shape.

[0] https://www.google.com/search?&q=iconic+packaging

Size and shape reminds me of the arguement the music industry made about CD packaging and inserts being tangible, value-adds to the listening experience.

Turns out, especially with a lot of CPGs now being sold online, consumers care more about price and quality/quantity than size and shape....

Marketing is zero sum. If we standardize everything, then marketers will find some other way to differentiate themselves. It's not a problem we as a society should give any weight to.

Glass bottles had variation, because they had their own deposit/return chain to hang on to their own bottles for reuse. They could afford to use them as unique branding too. If they were getting Pepsi or Irn Bru bottles back, or no bottle back, it wouldn't work.

Now, a bottle of Coke is identical to a bottle of Pepsi, Irn Bru or cheapest own label, except for the label, colour of contents and cap. Just a standard, almost generic, 2l or 500ml bottle. Do they even sell glass Cokes any more? I can't remember the last time I saw one. Beer still comes in glass, so there's far more variation. Deposits are no more. Reuse is no more.

Can't be that powerful in differentiating or marketing in comparison to saving a penny or two using generic plastic.

While 2L bottles are roughly standardized in most markets, other commonly found bottle sizes are not as standard. A 20oz bottle of Coke looks extremely different from a 20oz bottle of Pepsi. And yes, Coca-Cola still sells Coke in glass bottles in many markets.

This is commonly done with bottled water in many European countries. You see stacks of formed plastic holders for the bottles in the back. As bottles get drunk, the empties are placed back into the holders, and the company servicing the restaurant comes frequently and swaps out the empties for full ones. You can tell the bottles are reused a lot because they have pretty substantial wear marks on their sides where they rub against the holders.

And yeah, it'd be great if the same kind of system were extended to more products in the US. It'd be awesome if we could standardize on containers of, e.g., size 50mL, 100mL, 200mL, 500mL, 1 L, both for liquid and solid goods, and just have everything be sold in those. Then you'd just recycle those containers as normal, and instead of being broken down and remade, they'd simply be washed and reused.

It’s not done for small bottled water in the US, but it is done for multi-gallon “water bottles”, i.e. the things you use with a water cooler. Mostly you’re not returning them, though (although you can return them); you’re just reusing the ones you own.

I feel like that might be a more sustainable system: a grocery store where everything is shipped to the store and held in large bulk containers (which can be reused between the store and the supplier), and then, when purchased (through a deli counter or machines), some of the contents of the large container are transferred to fill up a small reusable plastic container you’ve brought from home. (Either by plugging it into the vending machine—like with refillable water jugs—or by handing it to the deli clerk to fill. Or, in the case of bulk bins, just filling your containers yourself, and then weighing them at the self-checkout. [That presumes each container has some sort of standardized tare code on it you can scan so that you don’t have to weigh every container empty when you first come in.])

I never see water coolers anymore I just see water purifiers everywhere .

Such grocery stores exist: https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2014/sep/16...

> bottles get drunk

I'd like to see some drunken bottles!

Oregon has a beer bottle reuse program. They aim for 40 uses per bottle. Apparently oregon's bottle law is unique because it put the beverage industry in charge of deposits and collection.

https://www.opb.org/news/article/oregon-craft-beer-refillabl...

I run a Hard Cider company in OR.

We (the beverage industry/my company) are only in practice responsible for deposits. While we are required to take collections, no consumers really returns them to us. The return burden often falls on the retailers, who collect deposit directly from consumers.

When we sell product to a retail store. We collect a 10¢ deposit per can from them. The retailer then collects a 10¢ deposit from the customer.

My company gives all our collected deposits to a co-op (which is state run I believe) who handle the collection/recycling of the containers.

I interact with our bottle bill on a pretty small scale, but I believe that only changes my reporting frequency.

Some places have local "zero-waste" grocery stores that sell everything in reusable containers that you return when you come back to the store.

For people who don't live in those places, a few online retailers like Loop are trying to fill the gap[1].

1. https://cleantechnica.com/2019/02/19/loop-to-launch-zero-was...

Add to that, more bottled water should be in actual glass bottles not plastic.

Make it more recyclable like beer bottles or old school Coke bottles.

Aluminum and glass are better for recycling than plastic, if the cost is higher so be it, doesn't stop people from buying beer bottles.

Well glass tastes better, so sure.

But the benefits are not obvious. If we assume diesel as a substitute good for plastic [1] then the additional weight of transporting glass could cause more waste (by burning additional diesel)

So, if a commmunity doesn’t have a local wash and refill center, it’s not obvious that plastic wins.

[1] you can make diesel from plastic (not easy, but probably easier than recycling mixed plastic). Assuming the plastic will go to the oceans otherwise, that’s a pretty good thing to do since diesel will get burned anyway and plastic is diverted from the seas.

It's been proposed, and is being worked on. http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/reusable-packagin...

Also, beer bottles.

Here's another look at Loop with some more products: https://www.fastcompany.com/90296956/a-coalition-of-giant-br...

and a bit on Oregon's new "reusable beer bottle" for local craft brewers. difficult to pull off on American nat'l for the usual reasons… https://www.fastcompany.com/90239092/this-reusable-beer-bott...

Personally, I would 100% change my shopping habits around brands that adopted standards like this.

Go find a small local dairy (in the US.)

There's a good chance they wash and re-use the bottles. The deposit might be greater than the cost of the milk.

I vaguely remember buying a bottle of milk once at Whole Foods and needing to return the bottle for my deposit.

In the 1990s, I had an after school job at a local dairy that was loosing a ton of money on their bottles because they didn't charge a deposit, and many customers didn't understand that we needed them back. We had a giant machine to wash all the bottles.

We used to do that with soda bottles. I think some places still do.

It was also standard with glass milk bottles, in the UK at least.

UK glass milk deliveries still exist. We have milk delivered 3 times per week. (that's the cadence of the milk company, not our choosing) and until recently within last 6 months ish) ALL quantities were delivered an 1pt returnable glass bottles. now they deliver typical 2pt and 2L PET containers which is handy for the fridge but if you order a 1pt you still get glass (and sometimes multiples if they have a supply chain issue like when they changed recently from 4pt to 2L for the same cost :/ )

The Soviet Union did this. People used mayonnaise jars for everything and carried them around wherever they went.

My parents had this in the late 60s-70s in the country-side. It disappeared in the mid-70s/end-70s.

With the advent of plastic no doubt. The plastic/petroleum economy (parodied in Superman3) killed off many more sustainable (wood/glass/metal) programs, as they allowed more consumption with all externalities ignored.

Now we're paying the price. I'm at the point where I've started to change my purchase habits to avoid packaging in general. This means more veggies and paper-packed meat and less frozen.

Adding costs to dispose of plastic waste (preferably at the storefront) would greatly improve options.

Here’s a first step: https://www.environmentalleader.com/2019/01/terracycle-circu...

> I've always wondered why there couldn't be standard containers for products like jam, wine, butter etc. where the containers are designed to be easily washed and reused.

This used to be the case in my country back when I was a kid and when we were still under (nominal) communist rule. Almost no jars or bottles were thrown out after use because that would have been similar to literally throwing money away, what was usually happening was that our parents would send us, kids, with a bag of empty milk bottles and jam jars to the closest general store and we would receive some money in return for said bottles and jars (not much of a sum, I agree, but it was better than nothing).

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