We need to wrap this plastic bottle in a plastic bag !
this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2024
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Well I’m no chemist but yes? If necessary. It is a very efficient concept with no downside except being slightly more inconvenient.
Though I would guess at least a few kinds of products would be safe to sell undiluted. Dish soap, soap in general, detergent is already sold as powder, dishwasher tabs and powder exists, probably a good part of cosmetics as well.
I just gave you a half dozen downsides and didn’t even get into the specifics yet.
Well you said it costs more and needs safe handling at the store. Potentially a safety hazard. Why is it a safety risk to ship bulk containers of the exact same thing we are shipping to stores now in small individual packaging? No mixing or diluting for the dangerous stuff, just bulk transport and sale. The mixing and diluting is only for things safe to be done by people at home, like the mentioned soaps.
So let’s take a potential situation and play it out.
You have 10,000L of bleach to store. Let’s use 2,500x4l jugs and a nice bulk 10,000L tank (relatively close to bulk chemical containers). Both hold the same amount, but now let’s say Tom wasn’t paying attention with the fork lift and hit the package with a fork on the forklift.
With the small containers, maybe a half dozen would be damaged, so 24l of product. Thats not bad, grab some absorb-all and some dams and it should be easy to clean.
Now that 10,000l tank, chances are the entire 10,000 is leaking out, getting everywhere, gotta close the store, call in HazMat to clean up, through out everything else the bleach touched. Sure insurance will pay for it, but it’s a $20 cleanup vs a $50k bill.
Now you also have ammonia stored there too, pretty common for stores to have both, let’s have a small drip from a bulk container come and meet the bleach breach. Everyone’s dead. This is obviously a worst case, but small bottles not an issue, big bottles, the whole town is gonna have a bad time.
Smaller bottles don’t make a big mess/cost/issue/danger when something inevitably happens. Scale matters, hugely.
Oddly, gas stations seem to handle the bulk storage and distribution of potentially dangerous substances in or near residential areas just fine.
I’m not saying it will be easier, or cheaper. Or that the stores wouldn’t have to retain higher qualified personnel. But the principle is sound, and if 10k liter tanks are too much risk make it 1k liters. Still a massive improvement over 500 ml single use spray bottles.
They store one type of chemical, and they are in massive tanks underground with multiple layers of protection, and even then the ground is almost always contaminated after and needs to be remediated before it can be used again. Or it sits for 20 years.
I appreciate the example working in my favor.
Linky for example
Alright then, no point trying to convince you I guess 🫠 are you by any chance also against nuclear power in favor of continuing to burn coal?
Jeez it works in small scale and for niche products since they don’t need to store them in dangerous quantities.
The personal attack is a nice touch.
Nuclear is amazing, it’s actually safer than coal, so I don’t get the point of this unnecessary personal attack since I was providing discourse as to why a very good idea isn’t pursued more.
I wasn’t personally attacking you, just looking for additional context on why you are so staunchly defending single use plastic bottles, and what your solutions would be. Since continuing like we do, isn’t a valid option.
For example, the dispensary model is being tested/used in Switzerland for a few years now:
https://aare.migros.ch/de/engagement/nachhaltigkeit/abfuellstation.html
Also this would not require gas station levels of infrastructure, since people usually don’t fill up on dozens of liters of detergent at once, and there are various brands. Smaller tanks, qualified handlers, still seems a very solid option.