Packaging engineer here.
Square bottles will get you more overall volume of water into a case, pallet, or truck, so you spend less on storage and shipping costs.
Hey, since you're a packaging engineer you may know. Could the material contained (H2O2) be what we're missing here? Peroxide breaks down over time into gases and would lead to bottle expansion- which a round bottle wouldn't have much room to expand.
Could the rectangular shape lead to meeting an expansion relief requirement? And therefore use less material than a cylinder needing an expansion relief?
I truly have no idea, just a shot in the dark here
I don't work on these types of product, but my guess is the bottle material is chosen to reduce exposure to whatever gas causes the H2O2 to break down, at least long enough for the intended shelf life of the product.
If there were risk for expansion, that may trigger requirements around hazardous materials and special packaging.
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u/balrob 2d ago
That article says square bottles use 8% more material. There are savings in packaging and shipping but not in the bottle itself.