In 2011, José Manuel Moller was living in a low-income neighborhood in Santiago, Chile, with some of his university classmates. Moller was in charge of cooking and stocking the house with everyday items from local mom-and-pop stores. Given his limited student budget, he was continually purchasing the smallest sizes of everything — “a quarter-liter of coconut oil, a quarter-kilo of sugar,” he recalls — each in its own little throwaway container. Moller comes from a big family, so he had been used to buying these necessities in bulk. After a while, comparing notes with his mom, he realized that he was spending about 40 percent more than she was on household items — all because the smaller sizes, which have a higher packaging-to-product ratio, cost more.
Read more at Next City.