You know what's more efficient than glass? Ship the product in bulk and dispense it into the customer's container.
And a lot of products could actually be formulated on site, because most of, say, your cleaning aisle is various combinations of relatively few standard components. The biggest barrier there are certain people's desires to control information and to create the perception of distinctions that don't exist.
While I’m a big fan of being able to buy quantities in bulk, it’s worth remembering we did just go through a 3 year period that should illuminate why “every Tom, Dick and Harry brings their likely barely washed if not fully contaminated packaging from home and uses the community ladle to scoop out of the community bin into their bag” might not be the best default. At least with factory -> sanitized individual wrappings you can spend a lot of effort stopping contamination at specific points in the supply chain. Bulk -> consumer reused packaging is much much harder to prevent contamination.
> You know what's more efficient than glass? Ship the product in bulk and dispense it into the customer's container.
yeah, that would be a great use of everyone's time. line up at the olive oil station, line up at the beer station, line up at the flour station, line up at the coffee station, line up at the ketchup station, ....
and then on top of that, add up the time and expense of everyone getting a different price based on how much their unique container holds.
I'd love if there were just dispensers for the soaps and juices and what not I buy. Just tap my credit card, press a button, and fill a big jug. I agree I probably wouldn't want everything sold as such but loads of staples where I am probably going to go through a lot of it all the time or are already going to have a short shelf life, sure.
And yeah, I actually do go with the "line up at the beer station and get bulk beer", a number of breweries around me have walk-up growler filling stations. It is pretty nice getting fresh beer straight from the source. A few groceries near me fill growlers as well.
I know this will blow your mind, but where I do my shopping (France) this exists in many places and there are no queues.
It takes 1 minute more to fill a bag or bottle. But it prevents a heck of a lot of packaging. And I can take precisely the quantity I want, in the container that I want.
Perhaps you prefer the “old” way. Perhaps it is faster. But if we can not make tiny changes like that, how will we explain ourselves in 30 years time to our grandchildren?
“Yea I know sweety we messed up your planet. But I’ll be dead in 5 years and in the mean time it was really convenient. Sucks to be you”
> It takes 1 minute more to fill a bag or bottle. But it prevents a heck of a lot of packaging. And I can take precisely the quantity I want, in the container that I want.
1 minute for each product, vs like 1 second for each product. I think it's a similar efficiency loss as containerized vs break bulk shipping.
We can't have nice things because we don't enforce any standard of conduct. Progressives are more concerned about git branch names than ensuring children actually learn something in school.
Many (most?) nicer grocery stores in the US already do bulk packaging for coffee, to no discernible detrimental effect.
Compared to narrow aisles and decision paralysis from 60 different plastic bottles with the same ingredients but different scents/dyes, I think any inefficiencies in bulk shopping are probably pretty small.
This might be a local thing for you. The only store around me that has bulk coffee is the very bougie food co-op. Even nice stores like whole foods, wegmans, trader joes don't have that.
Wegman's definitely has bulk food sections. The memorable part is the candy but there are other foods. I'm not sure if they have bulk coffee? Their name brand coffee bags have the roast date on them (vs. "best by" BS dates) so I zeroed in on that and didn't look back.
Also Stop'n'Shop, a very much NOT a bougie food store, has bulk coffee with a grinder. At least in some locations.
Possibly. I know for a fact that Whole Foods in NYC has bulk coffee, as well as bulk rice and other grains. It's also the norm in local mid-range chains (Westside Market, Fairway) and greenmarket-style stores.
They’re common, but A) generally make up a tiny portion of floor space (at least in the U.S., apart from rare specialty stores) and B) I would hazard a guess that they are less sanitary and even less fresh on average than comparable packaged foods.
You clearly have no idea about what you are talking about.
I've been buying bulk everything I can for a long time and I don't see any downside to it.
It's smarter in every single point:
- I buy what I need instead of what was decided by the packager.
- I don't buy a package to throw it away and buy a new one next time. What a waste of money on top of the environmental impact.
- It's way more efficient for shopping. When things are organised in bulk it's visually much easier to spot in comparison with packaged stuff with random designs in aisles.
- Never experience "queues at stations" so this is a non problem in my 2 decades experiences of shopping in bulk in various cities/countries
You know what’s actually a waste of my time? Cleaning out my fridge of all the food waste generated because I couldn’t actually buy just 1 carrot, I have to buy 3 pounds wrapped in plastic for some reason.
And a lot of products could actually be formulated on site, because most of, say, your cleaning aisle is various combinations of relatively few standard components. The biggest barrier there are certain people's desires to control information and to create the perception of distinctions that don't exist.