Delivery Boxes: LiquidsBox

Usually delivered during the day, along with other groceries, these boxes are used to hold liquids that we use regularly and often buy two or more litres at a time. For example:

Overview

These are the size of a large cereal or washing-powder box (36x25x13 cm or 14x10x5 in.) and made of cream coloured plastic - but they are covered in a thin plastic “skin” showing the branding of the contents.

These are the same size and of similar construction to the PaperBox. Single skinned but less garish in colour as these will remain on a special rack in the customer’s utility room wall, inside a kitchen cupboard or inside their refrigerator or freezer. They are designed to hold liquids – from drinking water to detergents.

Use

A tap like that on a wine-box is built into a recess in the front of each box.

Impact

Reusable boxes for these classes of goods are obviously less wasteful than the bottles we buy them in today. However, the upfront cost of a container will be significant and hence there will be incentives to offer customers bulk purchase deals to amortise the initial cost of the container over several refills. Done properly, these can encourage brand loyalty as it will be more expensive to keep changing brands.

We should not constrain our thinking to the items we currently buy in large quantities and store in our kitchens or utility rooms. Now that many houses have multiple bathrooms, for example, a house might have three or more bottles of bubble-bath.  If it’s anything like our house, one of these runs out every few days and results in a semi-naked child stealing one from another bathroom. Apart from the ensuing arguments, having to keep restocking several independent supplies seems a bit of a waste of time. A single bulk container in the utility room or garage with a few litres of bubble-bath could easily be used to refill our existing containers many times over – saving us hassle and the cost and environmental impact of today’s containers.

Re-skinning

It may be that one customer does not continue to use the same brand enough times to justify the cost of the container. There will also be wear and tear on the container's outer surface each time it makes a round-trip back to the hub for refilling. This is why they all share a common “shell” but have a branded outer “skin” of thin, printed, coloured plastic. A container can be refreshed or rebranded simply by replacing the outer skin. Each shell should therefore last many years.

Content Measurement

Sensors can either be built into the boxes themselves or into specially designed shelves. These can tell how heavy the box is and, knowing what it is meant to contain and how the contents have been dropping, can tell when it's time for a replacement. This could be a suggestion presented to you the next time you order groceries - letting you decide whether to restock before or after you use the last of the current batch.

A transparent strip running vertically down the front of the container would make it easy to see the current level of the contents.

Hygiene

Boxes holding food need to be thoroughly washed at the hub before being reused. These boxes are designed to be hygienic - with rounded corners and the minimum of surface detail so that germs cannot hide in the crevices. The automatic washing and sterilising systems must clean the boxes to the same standard that we expect of our already reusable milk bottles.

The tap is where germs are likely to accumulate and it may be best to make these detachable - washing, sterilising or recycling them on each use according to the contents.

Carbonated Drinks

Soda (fizzy drinks) and beers may require a more robust container as the pressure these are under would deform the standard LiquidsBox. An aluminium shell may be more appropriate for these.

Components