And why not just use a smaller packaging to save waste? (I’m talking about stuff like chips)
In: Physics
This is often done in order to protect them from getting crushed in shipping. It also has a secondary nicety for the company where the customer feels like they are getting more than they are. Unfortunately, many companies aren’t concerned with their waste and more with quick, easy, effective packaging.
Potato Chips need that extra air to not only cushion them, to keep the chips from just crumbling to dust while being transported, but also to help keep them from going bad, as the nitrogen inside the bags is designed to keep them preserved until opened.
In many cases, the extra packaging has a reason, and generally it’s “to make sure it makes it from the factory to the store safely.”
Chips are very fragile. If not for the “air” (it’s actually inert gas) filling the bags, the chips would be crushed to a powder by the time you got them home.
* Typical potato chips are slightly different shapes and sizes.
* When they get packaged they take up nearly all of the bag.
* As the bag is moved, the chips shift around and because of gravity that shift tends to draw them downward.
* By random chance, a chip will get shifted into a position that fits well with the chip below it.
* Over enough time the chips become more tightly packed in the bottom of the bag due to those random shifts lining the chips up such that they can fit closer together.
* The result is a lot more empty space above the chips than there was at the factory.
* The chip companies could vibrate the bags at the factory in order to get the chips to pack more tightly and reduce the size of the bags, but there are a few problems with that:
* Some amount of the chips will break on their way to the consumer, shaking the bag at the factory will likely increase the amount.
* As others have said, allowing the empty space means the chips are less likely to break on their way to the consumer.
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