<story><title>Designing a Bottle</title><url>http://blog.soylent.com/post/163186012757/how-to-design-a-bottle</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ethagknight</author><text>Wouldn&amp;#x27;t a Boxed Soylent (sealed bladder in a box like boxed wine) be most efficient for shipping to consumer, and most efficient for consumption? If they are really trying to optimize every aspect, that seems like the solution (from my armchair!). My first thought when seeing the headline was &amp;quot;oh boy, Silicon Valley has been shopping something in a bottle for 1 year now, and now they&amp;#x27;re experts in bottle packaging innovation, but I was pleasantly surprised by the write up. They identified problems unique to their product and addressed them.  Nothing earth shattering glass, but also not settling for status quo. It&amp;#x27;s minor but non-trivial, and it speaks to the attitude of the overall product. I&amp;#x27;ve been keeping Soylent around as a healthy meal-in-a-pinch option and I really enjoy it, plain flavor and all. Super filling, tastes like a plant-y pancake batter.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jitl</author><text>My take on the reasons that soylent didn&amp;#x27;t go with paper packaging (cartons or bag-in-box):&lt;p&gt;1. Paper packaging is much more fragile than plastic packaging. Boxes permanently dent, buckle when compressed, tear much more easily, etc, when enduring punishment that a plastic container will shrug off. Paper is also much less resistant to water damage. Paper-packaged products like milk cartons or juice boxes are usually transported in durable, rigid-walled crates, and would probably do much worse than the previous plastic bottle in a regular door-delivery use-case.&lt;p&gt;2. I&amp;#x27;ve always found the relatively low rigidity of the whole assemblage to make sipping directly from a TetraPak sort-of-thing a little slippery and uneasy. The box can warp in all sorts of ways. Maybe I&amp;#x27;ve just been burned by spilling milk on my shirt late at night trying to drink from the carton...&lt;p&gt;3. Bag-in-box specifically doesn&amp;#x27;t &amp;quot;scale down&amp;quot; to single servings that well. The experience of drinking out of a bladder within a larger box is less-than-ideal because the bladder can slosh around inside the container. Maybe if they aimed to sell bulk wet Soylent fluid, bag-in-box would be the way to go.</text></comment>
<story><title>Designing a Bottle</title><url>http://blog.soylent.com/post/163186012757/how-to-design-a-bottle</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ethagknight</author><text>Wouldn&amp;#x27;t a Boxed Soylent (sealed bladder in a box like boxed wine) be most efficient for shipping to consumer, and most efficient for consumption? If they are really trying to optimize every aspect, that seems like the solution (from my armchair!). My first thought when seeing the headline was &amp;quot;oh boy, Silicon Valley has been shopping something in a bottle for 1 year now, and now they&amp;#x27;re experts in bottle packaging innovation, but I was pleasantly surprised by the write up. They identified problems unique to their product and addressed them.  Nothing earth shattering glass, but also not settling for status quo. It&amp;#x27;s minor but non-trivial, and it speaks to the attitude of the overall product. I&amp;#x27;ve been keeping Soylent around as a healthy meal-in-a-pinch option and I really enjoy it, plain flavor and all. Super filling, tastes like a plant-y pancake batter.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gyrgtyn</author><text>What kind of plastic is this? Actually, I don&amp;#x27;t care; I wish disposable plastic in general would go away.&lt;p&gt;Isn&amp;#x27;t part of their marketing greeness? But their model is keurig-for-calories? They _could_ refuse to do the plastic bottles and ship paper bags of powder...</text></comment>