So I want to make a general pitch to the universe for a big bulk store grocery chain that focuses on using reusable packing. The concept is 'we-pack' - so, unlike most bulk stores today, you don't fill the containers, the store does.
Idea is a very different experience compared to any other grocery store - instead of walking down aisle after aisle of products, it would probably be focused around a smaller showroom. Maybe you get a tablet to place your order, then you walk around little product displays. There is a cereal section, maybe it has little wax mock-ups of the different cereals, with nutritional information write ups, you key in the ones you want, in the package sizes. When you are done, you pay - possibly spending some time in a waiting area while everything is being filled - then pick up your packages and go.
There are some bulk stores out there, or stores that focus on reusable packaging. But they tend to be small, not really a place to get most or all of your food. I think a lot of people use plastic bags at bulk stores, which doesn't help reduce packaging so much.
What I am visualizing would probably have to be fairly big to work. Generally the nature of grocery retail is huge chains operating on small profit margins. Some small grocers do survive but it is difficult, especially if they want to have the lowest prices.
Being big would help get a reasonable price on the containers as well. Maybe to start some plastic, there's glass, but optimally the goal might be something like stainless steel. Plastic lids still maybe. I don't have solid numbers, but a 5 litre stainless steel container to hold cereal or flour etc might cost say $10 to produce. So maybe the store charges a $10 deposit, which does add up for all your groceries. Could be people are willing to pay a deposit if they know they can get that money back, could be you have to charge a cheaper deposit and accept the loss if some go missing.
The store would wash the containers in-house. Much simpler and more sanitary doing it that way. So you would be getting new containers every time you went there.
Packing is fairly cheap, but over the long run it would probably save people money. Again I don't know, but a cereal box and bag might cost say .25 in packaging. So you have to use that steel container 40 times before it is cheaper. But optimally those containers are getting used thousands of times. Also the reason why packaging is so cheap is because the environmental damages it does often aren't costed in, so while you don't 'save' on cheaper cereal there, we do collectively 'save'. Overall I've heard packaging is about 7% of the price of things, so there is potential to save a few % on your grocery bill.
Most products already come in packaging, so it would need to get around that system. So the store would have to make special arrangements with the cereal makers etc, or better still manufacture their own cereal. The manufacturer would package directly into big bulk-optimized containers, which would be shipped directly to the stores, and dispense directly into the customer's stainless steel containers. The we-pack model with a smaller showroom could cut down on store size as well - grocery stores are really big places on valuable land.
To me that seems like a solid business model. With the qualifier that it would only really work if it was big - minimum starting investment of hundreds of millions, dozens of stores to start? Do people see flaws in the model? Optimally be nice to do it as a consumer owned cooperative. I think there's huge untapped potential for crowd funding - everybody uses groceries, if 10% of the US population chipped in $10 each that would be almost $350 million in seed capital. Not that I see raising $350 million as particularly realistic..
Lots of talk of public groceries stores these days, Avi Lewis, Zohran Mamdani, if you are going to go to the effort of doing that, why not try to cut down on packaging as well? If it operated at cost and owned a lot of its own manufacturing and shipping, owned it's own land even, it could offer groceries at maybe 10-15+% less (???) than current grocery prices - and that's a real 10% less, not like when they bump up the prices then put it at a discount, 10% less than what you are actually spending now. Aside from not generating a mountain of packaging every day.
I'd even be happy if free market capitalism went ahead and did this for us. Any masters of industry reading? If I was at the helm of some mega-corporation I'd feel some social responsibility towards these things. A major retailer could roll out a system like this easily enough, in the grand scheme of things - certainly it would be a big expense, possibly even more risk than the risk:return equation would justify. Although seems definitely possible that they could increase their profits with a strategy like this. Environmentalism is a strong and growing movement, you'd be well positioned if there do start being more taxes on environmental damage, and things start costing their true cost.