this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2023
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In the store, I sometimes encounter containers (e.g., beer, water, shampoo) with a volume of 618ml. Why exactly this number? (lemm.ee)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

We get the joy of both here in the US. Both are required to be listed and either can be a nice round number but generally it is the imperial one.

[โ€“] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I love that both are listed.

You do sometimes see nice round metric numbers, for example soft drinks (soda / pop) often come in 2 litre bottles.

I'm still unsure as to why soft drink bottles are measured in litres while milk is measured in gallons... A carton of milk (half a gallon, 1.9L) is almost as large as a bottle of soft drink (2L) so it's strange they haven't converged.

There's also things like the TSA liquids limit, which is defined as exactly 100mL but commonly written as 3.4 fl oz.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Milk has been sold in gallons longer than pop has existed is my only guess for why milk hasn't switched.

The US government has been very on board with metric, for example the US was one of the original signatories of the metric convention. It's just not simple to mandate that people stop using traditional units and instead use the official standard units.

Pepsi and coke both have significant international business, which makes standard bottles appealing.
Additionally, in the mid seventies when the US was last making a push towards making the private sector switch Pepsi as a marketing gimmick switched to a bottle that was bigger than a typical coke bottle and also metric.
https://youtu.be/L6O4UeowF5I?si=fncOmRnbigWOrAsR

They hoped to be ahead of the curve in the US, better value than coke, and use one bottle everywhere.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

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[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

which makes standard bottles appealing.

I was thinking about this, but if it's the case, why are cans different? US cans are 12 fl oz (355mL), Australian and New Zealand cans are 375mL, European and Middle Eastern cans are often 330mL.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

There's sadly no interesting answer. They just didn't try the marketing gimmick with cans.