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Ask HN: Why can't the government forced standardized bottles and containers?

2 points by samemail88 ↗ HN
Climate change and environmentalism has been on my mind a lot lately and it's got me thinking ways to solutions to tackle it. One solution I thought of is why can't the US government force the standardization of bottles and containers. Imagine if the government create a standard for two types of bottles and containers; one for consumables (drinks, etc) and the other for non-consumables (shampoo, liquid soap, etc). Within these two categories, there will be different sizes, 16oz, 28oz, etc. The only type of material that can be used is glass and aluminum. If the government mandate all companies do this, then companies who manufacture bottles and containers will compete on price since everything (design, sizes, material) else is standardized. Initially the cost of the bottles/containers will be higher but overtime it should go lower as manufacturing companies compete on price and consumers start reusing existing bottles/containers. With this mandate, now I can take my used shampoo bottle and refill it at the store (assuming stores offer this). Recycling would be easier as aluminum is profitable for recycling and glass can be washed and be reused. Government can mandate stores that sell things in these bottles/containers to take them back. We can even have some form of CRV to encourage people to return/recycle them. What kind of disadvantages are there to standardization of bottles and containers? Can the government realistically create such a mandate?

10 comments

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blinded
standard issue nalgene water bottle at birth would get my vote.
hotpotamus
Ah, always nice (though rare) to meet a fellow member of my species, Homo Economicus. You aren't female perchance? You don't have to answer that, I already know.

You specified size in ounces, why not metric? I'd read up on that a bit and if you don't lose all hope after that, come back and we can talk about the rest.

permo-w
it's a great idea, but - depending on where you live * - in the current political climate (i.e. corporate consensus) it's on a scale of "unlikely" to "the opposite is more likely"

this might fly in the Germanic countries (sans England), but in most Western countries the corporate pushback would be far too high.

even if long-term it would be cheaper, businesses a) don't like change, and b) don't like being restricted in any way whatsoever. imagine how hard coca-cola would lobby to keep using their classic bottle design. imagine how easy it would be for the corporate-owned press to sell this as Sovietism reborn or some other such nonsense

I feel like in America and the more right-wing countries, you're far more likely to be seeing a law enshrining the future rights of businesses to non-homogeneity

*America, based on your use of fluid ounces

samemail88
I feel like corporate interest be only thing stopping it from happening. But the great thing about having standard bottles is one corporation can’t “cheat” and have a more unique bottle. So its fair for all companies. Also standard bottles doesn’t mean they cant put labels on the bottles. They can promote their product still on the label attached to the bottle.
aurizon
I recall when all drink bottles were recycled, with a deposit. A small coke was 5 cents including a 2 cent deposit. About 90-95% compliance. Companies would steam clean, use a crossed polariser inspection light to check for cracks/dead mice and refill them. Now they have passed the plastic buck to the trash recyclers. Some jurisdictions have plastic bottle deposits and they have good compliance. Beer bottles are often still glass - recycled. There is huge puchback by supermarkets on deposits - they would have to count, sort, box millions of wet/sticky bottles, glass or plastic. Bottles can be bar coded and customers forced to feed them in one at a time into a machine that compresses them and drops them into category boxes = pure one type. Metal ones, the same method, another machine. Some towns in various places now because the forced return for a deposit by these machines is a net positive, as they get purer stream of semi pure plastic = $$ from recyclers, while mixed often have a fee to take away. They must mandate deposits/sorts/returns as the huge mass of waste plastic is already a serious problem and burning = carbon into the air.
dane-pgp
> With this mandate, now I can take my used shampoo bottle and refill it at the store (assuming stores offer this).

Do you really need a standardized bottle for this? As long as the shampoo dispenser measures how much product it dispenses, it doesn't matter what it dispenses into.

I suppose the machine (or attendant) needs to know what to do if the customer tries to buy 330ml but only has a 250ml bottle, and they might feel cheated if they over-fill the bottle and some product leaks down the side, but shops will be incentivized to make this less likely to happen if they want customers to come back.

There might also be a problem with cross-contamination of unclean containers touching a nozzle, which is taken seriously by some in the food service industry[0], but hasn't stopped restaurants offering Coca-Cola Freestyle machines to customers.

[0] https://cellarcraftuk.com/cross-glass-contamination-legaliti...

samemail88
Part of the reason of standardizing is to make sure the bottles are of a particular strength, quality, durability. Currently, some bottles break after a few uses, some break easily, some have unique caps that if you lose or break, you can never buy a replacement. Standardizing has many benefits, just look at mason jars. Look at standardization in other industries. Imagine if every company has their own standard tire? or phone charging port?
dane-pgp
> to make sure the bottles are of a particular strength, quality, durability.

That sounds like something the free market can solve. If people want bottles that last 5 years, then some company can offer a 5 year guarantee, or there could be independent testing laboratories that verify these claims.

> some have unique caps that if you lose or break, you can never buy a replacement.

I think you're more likely to lose or break the whole bottle than just the cap, but in any case, I don't think the government needs to ban all innovation in bottle caps just to solve the non-existent problem of people losing those caps.

You're right, though, that if refilling machines needed bottles to have a specific opening type in order to connect to the machine securely, then the industry would need to settle on a common design. Fortunately there is already a manufacturers association which would make that possible:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closure_%26_Container_Manufact...

samemail88
I don’t know if the free market can solve certain problems like these. Take the phone charger example. The EU is forcing it to standardize to USB-C. Do you see it as a good or bad thing? Couldn’t you say its going to limit innovation? But standardizing it helps cut down on e-waste and helps the environment overall.
dane-pgp
I agree with the need to standardize phone chargers, but that's quite a different market. It is much more likely you'll let someone borrow your charger than borrow your bottle top, and also more likely that you'll buy a spare charger than a spare bottle top. Bottle tops are also probably easier to recycle than cables.