4 ms·

I think the parent meant an anecdote I've heard many times, in slightly different ways. It goes like this: a major toothpaste company was having a meeting, tryi

I think the parent meant an anecdote I've heard many times, in slightly different ways. It goes like this: a major toothpaste company was having a meeting, trying to increase sales. Many solutions were tried: new flavors, advertising, none had much effect. On a whim, a director asks the guy serving coffee: - Jack, what would you do to increase sales? - Have you tried increasing the hole on the toothpaste? There might be some truth to this, toothpaste tubes used to be metal in the 60s and you were supposed to punch a hole on the front of it with the back of the cover cap. That hole got a lot smaller than the ≈1cm wide in the plastic ones of today. It was also much easier to squeeze the very last gram by folding it.

dimitrios1 5y ago
It's amazing how backwards we went from a sustainability perspective when you consider likely no one had this issue front and center as they did in the early industrial days. We used reusable metals and glasses much more. Now everything is plastic.
- mschuster91 5y ago
  On the other side, just take a "Tragerl" of beer (German beer crate with 20x0.5l): - It weighs much more than a crate of 20x0.5l aluminium cans or plastic bottles - it is more voluminous: glass bottles have way thicker walls and they need plastic spacers to prevent the bottles from crashing each other, whereas cans and bottles can be shrinkwrapped just fine) - the return logistics are simpler: glass bottles and the crates have to be returned to the brewery to be refilled, whereas PET bottles and aluminium cans enter the normal, regional recycling stream The switch to plastics has saved lots of money and environmental pollution in logistics. What was missed though was regulating recycling capabilities of plastics - compound foils are impossible to separate, for example - and mandating that plastics not end up in garbage, e.g. by having a small deposit on each piece of plastic sold.
  - dimitrios1 5y ago
    > The switch to plastics has saved lots of money and environmental pollution in logistics Ah, but this is debatable! https://www.wri.org/insights/planes-trains-and-big-automobiles-how-heavy-transport-can-reduce-emissions-and-save-money https://www.wri.org/insights/planes-trains-and-big-automobil... "Trains move 32% of goods in the United States, but generate only 6% of freight-related greenhouse gas emissions. Meanwhile trucks account for 40% of American freight transport and 60% of freight-related emissions." From the beginning of the industrial period, we relied on rail and boat for logistics, and buggies for last mile deliveries, until the advent of affordable, mass produced vehicles, and the interstate system, this didn't change much. Our reliance on plastics combined with airplanes and trucks for logistics results in much greater pollution in my view. Granted, coal was the primary fuel source for steamboats and steam engines, but sail still was common until iron boats became widespread, and still more economical for cross-sea transportation. All this to say, as an amateur historian, in my view, this all comes to a precipice between the late 1950s and early 1960s, with the completion of the interstate highway system in the US, and DuPoint proliferating plastics in 1960s.
    - sbierwagen 5y ago
      >in the United States. Fun fact, Europe moves most of its freight by road: https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/figures/road-transports-market-share-increases-3/image_large https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/figures/road-transpo... Compare with the US: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ13vD99ncFsUMlXIcnacqW7h0tJYyeOwy3emWLKDai1v4dp97W9lLmgg8S0d1CLZ7qiP8&usqp=CAU https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ13vD9... (A screenshot from this PDF: https://www.kth.se/polopoly_fs/1.87118.1550154619!/Menu/general/column-content/attachment/0503_foldereng.pdf https://www.kth.se/polopoly_fs/1.87118.1550154619!/Menu/gene... )
    - elihu 5y ago
      That's an interesting point that without the interstate highway system (which had many benefits) we might be using rail a lot more than we are currently and therefore emitting less CO2. Another way of looking at it is that we could consider the interstate highways only half-complete, and that the important part that was never built was an electrical delivery system for the cars and trucks that use it, so they can recharge their batteries without even stopping. It's what we would have been forced to build if fossil fuels weren't plentiful and cheap and we still wanted to use cars and trucks for our main transportation. We could have built that in the 70's in response to the oil crisis, and we could've had 50 years of electric vehicles by now, and it could have worked even using awful lead-acid batteries if cars didn't have to go more than twenty miles or so between electrified road sections. Building the same thing now would be a lot easier. Battery technology is good enough that it would only be needed at regular intervals on the major freeways, and we can pair the electrified road sections with cheap solar power where it makes sense to do so.
LambdaComplex 5y ago
> toothpaste tubes used to be metal in the 60s and you were supposed to punch a hole on the front of it with the back of the cover cap I'm definitely too young to remember anything from the 1960s, but you can still buy tomato paste in tubes like that. Neat.
- lupire 5y ago
  Many medicines have the same tube style.
- selimthegrim 5y ago
  Anchovy paste too.
cge 5y ago
I had also heard a point for toothpaste involving the marketing: toothpaste advertisements, and all marketing imagery of toothpaste on a toothbrush, almost always show absurdly larger amounts of toothpaste than is effective or appropriate to use brushing teeth, trying to increase consumption by increasing waste.
- FridayoLeary 5y ago
  Another explanation could be that advertisers are trying to increase the visibility of the product being sold.
chriscjcj 5y ago
Reminds me of the Alka-Seltzer campaign "plop plop fizz fizz." One tablet was enough, but there wasn't any harm in consuming two. So they just told people to take two tablets. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/double-bubble/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/double-bubble/

dimitrios1 5y ago

It's amazing how backwards we went from a sustainability perspective when you consider likely no one had this issue front and center as they did in the early industrial days. We used reusable metals and glasses much more. Now everything is plastic.

mschuster91 5y ago
On the other side, just take a "Tragerl" of beer (German beer crate with 20x0.5l): - It weighs much more than a crate of 20x0.5l aluminium cans or plastic bottles - it is more voluminous: glass bottles have way thicker walls and they need plastic spacers to prevent the bottles from crashing each other, whereas cans and bottles can be shrinkwrapped just fine) - the return logistics are simpler: glass bottles and the crates have to be returned to the brewery to be refilled, whereas PET bottles and aluminium cans enter the normal, regional recycling stream The switch to plastics has saved lots of money and environmental pollution in logistics. What was missed though was regulating recycling capabilities of plastics - compound foils are impossible to separate, for example - and mandating that plastics not end up in garbage, e.g. by having a small deposit on each piece of plastic sold.
- dimitrios1 5y ago
  > The switch to plastics has saved lots of money and environmental pollution in logistics Ah, but this is debatable! https://www.wri.org/insights/planes-trains-and-big-automobiles-how-heavy-transport-can-reduce-emissions-and-save-money https://www.wri.org/insights/planes-trains-and-big-automobil... "Trains move 32% of goods in the United States, but generate only 6% of freight-related greenhouse gas emissions. Meanwhile trucks account for 40% of American freight transport and 60% of freight-related emissions." From the beginning of the industrial period, we relied on rail and boat for logistics, and buggies for last mile deliveries, until the advent of affordable, mass produced vehicles, and the interstate system, this didn't change much. Our reliance on plastics combined with airplanes and trucks for logistics results in much greater pollution in my view. Granted, coal was the primary fuel source for steamboats and steam engines, but sail still was common until iron boats became widespread, and still more economical for cross-sea transportation. All this to say, as an amateur historian, in my view, this all comes to a precipice between the late 1950s and early 1960s, with the completion of the interstate highway system in the US, and DuPoint proliferating plastics in 1960s.
  - sbierwagen 5y ago
    >in the United States. Fun fact, Europe moves most of its freight by road: https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/figures/road-transports-market-share-increases-3/image_large https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/figures/road-transpo... Compare with the US: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ13vD99ncFsUMlXIcnacqW7h0tJYyeOwy3emWLKDai1v4dp97W9lLmgg8S0d1CLZ7qiP8&usqp=CAU https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ13vD9... (A screenshot from this PDF: https://www.kth.se/polopoly_fs/1.87118.1550154619!/Menu/general/column-content/attachment/0503_foldereng.pdf https://www.kth.se/polopoly_fs/1.87118.1550154619!/Menu/gene... )
  - elihu 5y ago
    That's an interesting point that without the interstate highway system (which had many benefits) we might be using rail a lot more than we are currently and therefore emitting less CO2. Another way of looking at it is that we could consider the interstate highways only half-complete, and that the important part that was never built was an electrical delivery system for the cars and trucks that use it, so they can recharge their batteries without even stopping. It's what we would have been forced to build if fossil fuels weren't plentiful and cheap and we still wanted to use cars and trucks for our main transportation. We could have built that in the 70's in response to the oil crisis, and we could've had 50 years of electric vehicles by now, and it could have worked even using awful lead-acid batteries if cars didn't have to go more than twenty miles or so between electrified road sections. Building the same thing now would be a lot easier. Battery technology is good enough that it would only be needed at regular intervals on the major freeways, and we can pair the electrified road sections with cheap solar power where it makes sense to do so.

LambdaComplex 5y ago

> toothpaste tubes used to be metal in the 60s and you were supposed to punch a hole on the front of it with the back of the cover cap I'm definitely too young to remember anything from the 1960s, but you can still buy tomato paste in tubes like that. Neat.

lupire 5y ago
Many medicines have the same tube style.
selimthegrim 5y ago
Anchovy paste too.

cge 5y ago

I had also heard a point for toothpaste involving the marketing: toothpaste advertisements, and all marketing imagery of toothpaste on a toothbrush, almost always show absurdly larger amounts of toothpaste than is effective or appropriate to use brushing teeth, trying to increase consumption by increasing waste.

FridayoLeary 5y ago
Another explanation could be that advertisers are trying to increase the visibility of the product being sold.

chriscjcj 5y ago

Reminds me of the Alka-Seltzer campaign "plop plop fizz fizz." One tablet was enough, but there wasn't any harm in consuming two. So they just told people to take two tablets. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/double-bubble/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/double-bubble/