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Today packaging is designed to be the minimal it can be. Less cost in production, less space use for transport, less weight, and tailored to the product inside.

Today packaging is designed to be the minimal it can be. Less cost in production, less space use for transport, less weight, and tailored to the product inside. If you use standard reusable sizes, cleaning and sanitazation requirements must come first, and it will inevitably be heavier as well.

TeMPOraL 9y ago
Packaging of what? For some foodstuffs, yes - but not for many (if most) of them. Definitely not for beauty and personal hygiene stuff, where packaging is used to cheat consumers into thinking they're buying more stuff than they are (even more extreme than with groceries). Definitely not for appliances and consumer electronics, which use absurd amount of packaging for... I don't know, the unboxing experience, I think. I suppose the situation is much different in B2B and bulk orders (like gastronomy), when the packaging is not also fulfilling a marketing role. > If you use standard reusable sizes, cleaning and sanitazation requirements must come first, and it will inevitably be heavier as well. Yes. But it will not be throwaway anymore. It would be great if someone did the math on that. My gut tells me that even the repeated extra cost of shipping additional mass around is much less than it costs to make and dispose of packaging (the bulk of it being probably in the disposal, which producers externalize on the society, and so they prefer churning out new packaging).
- hvidgaard 9y ago
  I was mainly talking about food packaging, but you do have a point with cosmetics and the like. For consumer electronics I do not agree. Everything I've bought over the last 5 years have come in as small packages as possible. Suddenly shipping phones or whatever in standardized sized containers will just mean it will have to accommodate the largest phone and the void will need some single use filling to prevent damage during shipping.

TeMPOraL 9y ago

Packaging of what? For some foodstuffs, yes - but not for many (if most) of them. Definitely not for beauty and personal hygiene stuff, where packaging is used to cheat consumers into thinking they're buying more stuff than they are (even more extreme than with groceries). Definitely not for appliances and consumer electronics, which use absurd amount of packaging for... I don't know, the unboxing experience, I think. I suppose the situation is much different in B2B and bulk orders (like gastronomy), when the packaging is not also fulfilling a marketing role. > If you use standard reusable sizes, cleaning and sanitazation requirements must come first, and it will inevitably be heavier as well. Yes. But it will not be throwaway anymore. It would be great if someone did the math on that. My gut tells me that even the repeated extra cost of shipping additional mass around is much less than it costs to make and dispose of packaging (the bulk of it being probably in the disposal, which producers externalize on the society, and so they prefer churning out new packaging).

hvidgaard 9y ago
I was mainly talking about food packaging, but you do have a point with cosmetics and the like. For consumer electronics I do not agree. Everything I've bought over the last 5 years have come in as small packages as possible. Suddenly shipping phones or whatever in standardized sized containers will just mean it will have to accommodate the largest phone and the void will need some single use filling to prevent damage during shipping.