Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Incredible Shrinking Packages
Food inflation is currently running at its highest rate since the early 1990's.
This is being caused by a combination of soaring prices for commodities like wheat, and high oil prices (affecting transportation and plastics packaging).
Food companies, however, are not increasing the prices of their products.
Instead, they are quietly reducing the packaging and/or amounts.
Last year, for example, Coca-Cola began putting a smaller cap on its plastic bottles. This was a major design project because their engineers had to ensure the new caps did not leak or blow off.
The new cap is 24% lighter. Last year, Coke cut plastic use by 4 million pounds. This year, with the new cap roll-out complete, Coke should save 40 million pounds.
Kraft redesigned its 16-ounce dressing bottles to use 19% less plastic. This will save 3.4 million pounds per year.
Unilever is reducing the quantity of their products.
A jar of Hellman's mayonnaise has gone from 32 ounces to 30 ounces. A package of Country Crock spread has gone from 3 pounds down to 2 pounds, 13 ounces.
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2 comments:
Praveen,
Great posting. I've been telling my relatives that the hard times might actually have a silver lining. Its terrific that major corporations are cutting back on their packaging and portion sizes. This might actually help Americas obesity and garbage problems.
I'm glad you liked the post!
I agree that the higher costs will do more for conservation than government policies.
This is Economics 101 at work.
When the price of a resource gets high enough, a business will be very resourceful at minimizing it.
This means that the demand for oil is going to start reducing - so eventually prices will stop rising, and will probably come down.
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