So the other day I ran out of Telfast (a particular type of antihistamine drug) and so I went to the chemist to get some more.
Upon finding the box I immediately realised that it was noticeably larger than my previous one.
I was surprised that a company would decide to increase the size of a their packaging without increasing the size or quantity of the product it contains. I suspect this change is to do with some brand repositioning within it's owning company, Sanofi-Aventis, or maybe a change in where it's packaged. But, nevertheless, such a move struck me as counterproductive, which further investigation seems to support...
After getting the new box home I took some measurements and made some calculations:
| Old box | New box | Change | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Height | 25mm | 28mm | +3mm (12%) |
| Width | 120mm | 120mm | 0 |
| Depth | 55mm | 75mm | +20mm (36%) |
| Volume | 165cm3 | 252cm3 | +87cm3 (52%) |
So the new box is more than 50% larger than the old one - or to put it another way, I could fit one and half of the old boxes inside the new one.
At this point you might be thinking "so what, who cares if it's a little bigger?". Well, let me point out the ramifications this has for shipping.
It means that if before only 12 boxes fit in a shipping box, now only 8 will fit. If a truck was full of these it would be carrying roughly two thirds the original number of boxes. This means that it would require another half full truck to make up the other third to distribute the same quantity. Or for a 1.2m x 1.2m x 1.2m pallet load the difference is between fitting about 10000 of the old size to 6700 of the new size - that's more than 3000 fewer boxes!
This has two negative implications:
- shipping will cost roughly 50% more than before (assuming the shipping costs didn't change)
- waste and pollution from shipping will also increase by about 50% (assuming no change to the method of shipping). This is negated a little by the decrease in overall weight due to there being less product
The amusing thing in all this is that all the extra space is taken up by air. The extra money spent in transport and the extra burden this places on the environment is a result of packaging more air.
I don't know why they did this, but it goes to show how costly increasing package sizes by only a small amount can have.
you need to get out more...
you need to get out more...
You should send your
You should send your findings to the company who produces Telfast and the EPA
I was thinking about it a
I was thinking about it a little bit - and the only way it can be done without an increase to the financial and environmental cost is if the units are distributed to chemists directly from the place they are packaged in very small quantities.
Admittedly this form of distribution is probably very expensive anyway.
Have you considered how much
Have you considered how much extra energy and paper is used to make the larger boxes thus adding to waste and pollution?
Did you check the
Did you check the manufacturing dates? There's always a chance that the packaging change went in the other direction, but you've bought old stock that's been living in a back room.
The boxes are bigger because
The boxes are bigger because they take up more room on the retail shelf.The bigger he better. For one thing major product companies want the words bigger the boxing bigger to draw your attention to the product. If more products are sold, more re-stocking the store has to do. thus attracting people to that product they are handling. As the larger boxes take up more room on the shelf the stock will be re-stocked faster than the smaller ones. Its a marketing trick. Big money in marketing big boxes on the shelf!
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