Is it a major loss in profit or do current bottles make it impossible?
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Getting product to customers requires shipping it there somehow, in the US this is typically on a truck. Glass is much, much heavier than plastic, meaning less product can fit on these trucks.
The North American consumer supply chain is also oriented in a forward distribution manner, meaning that product are flowed from manufacturing, through distribution centers where product is deconsolidated and mixed with other freight for ultimate delivery to the end customer. If you consider returnable containers, this is a separate supply chain which is not as optimized as it’s going the wrong direction.
To further complicate this, consider the variety of packaging sizes and shapes that exist, each of them would need to be redirected to the correct origin point. Now we’re talking about a completely separate business just to manage the returnable containers. Someone has to purchase these containers, and then also manage the cleaning and sortation of the containers.
TL;DR – Glass is heavy (more weight = more cost), and supply chains run really well in one direction, going the other way is expensive.
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