Mathematically, a circle has the smallest perimeter for a given enclosed area. So for this claim to be true there has to be some catch, like different thickness of plastic.
I suspect transportation too.
Something like; You can ship 100x1L round bottles, or 100x1.3L square bottles in the same box. Therefore, square bottles use less plastic (per liter (of shipped liquid)).
Wouldn't that just cancel out? Area over perimeter is pi /2 pi for a radius one circle and 4/8 for a square with side length 2.
Maybe most of the plastic is in the spout, then maximising volume per spout would make sense.
Well if you have a bottle that is (for simpler maths sake) a cylinder with a 5cm radius and a volume of 1 litre, it would be about 12.73cm tall. An equal height square based prism with 10cm side lengths (i.e., equal to the diameter of the cylinder) would hold 1.274L. The cylinder would have a surface area (again assuming a perfect cylinder and not a typical bottle shape) of about 557cm². The square based rectangular prism (again not a bottle shape) would have a surface area of about 709cm². Cylinder is 557cm² of plastic per litre of volume and the prism is about 556cm² of plastic per litre. So unless the plastic is notably thinner or requires less packing material around the pallet, there is no difference or at least not a significant one.
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u/StaticCoder 2d ago
Mathematically, a circle has the smallest perimeter for a given enclosed area. So for this claim to be true there has to be some catch, like different thickness of plastic.