Walmart Reinvents the Milk Carton - Adjusting Packaging to Increase Efficiencies

SourceJuice recently wrote an article 4 Ways to Combat China Price Increases without Raising Prices to your Customer. Number 1 on our list was 'Adjust Your Packaging Size, Colors and Materials'. While this may seem obvious on the surface, a recent example is sure to prove the point... that truly rethinking your product's packaging can increase efficiencies and lower production and delivery costs.

The example is the 1 gallon milk jug and the forces behind the change are Walmart and Costco. The 1 gallon milk jug is a product that everyone, at least in the United States, is familiar with. We've grown up with it. Most people probably wouldn't have ever thought about changing it. However with milk for the most part mass produced and trucked hundreds or thousands of miles to its final destination, the milk jug really isn't the ideal packaging. So what are the changes exactly?

Superior Daily is the company responsible for designing the new jug and they've put together an excellent chart explaining all the benefits of the new milk jug compared to the old one. Click the chart below to make it larger.



Is everyone loving the new packaging? Of course not. Some people are claiming that it's harder to pour. Others are loving the new jug, particularly how it fits in the door panel of modern refirgerators. Either way, with the new jug reportedly saving about 20 cents per gallon of milk, they're unlikely to be going away anytime soon.

“This is a key strategy as a path forward,” said Anne Johnson, the director of the Sustainable Packaging Coalition, a project of the nonprofit group GreenBlue. “Re-examining, ‘What are the materials we are using? How are we using them? And where do they go ultimately?’ ”

So what are you doing to rethink your packaging?!?