Why the Can Costs More Than the Soda Inside It

A twelve-ounce can of soda holds about thirteen grams of aluminium, and by industry estimates that metal costs the bottler more than the water, sugar and flavouring inside it. That inversion — packaging more expensive than product — explains nearly everything about the object: the narrowed neck, the domed base, the walls about as thick as a human hair, and the tab that stopped coming off in 1975. This episode follows the mechanism from bauxite to kerbside. Why a smelter is really a business that buys electricity and ships it out in solid form. How the two-piece drawn-and-ironed can cut a beverage can from roughly twenty-two grams in the 1970s to about thirteen today. Why the lid, not the wall, is the expensive part, and why shrinking it produced the taper at the top. How carbonation, and a drop of liquid nitrogen in uncarbonated drinks, does the structural work the metal cannot. Then the second half: why melting a used can takes on the order of five percent of the energy of making new metal from ore, why that single ratio makes aluminium the one material in a recycling bin with a real market price, what Oregon's 1971 deposit law and Brazil's collection networks reveal about price signals, and why glass and plastic cannot reproduce any of it. This video explains how a business and a material work. It is not financial advice and does not recommend buying or selling anything. Chapters 0:00 Introduction 0:21 The container outprices the drink 1:17 Aluminium is electricity you can hold 2:28 Fifty years of taking metal away 3:39 The lid is the expensive half 4:33 The can is not strong, the pressure is 5:37 The tab that used to come off 6:42 The package that pays for its own collection 7:48 A nickel changes the number 8:57 Two alloys in one can 9:45 Why glass and plastic cannot copy this 10:54 The container became the reason to buy — — — MORE FROM THE MECHANISM How Tupperware Parties Made Money (It Failed in Stores)    • Видео   How Visa Makes Money Without Lending a Dollar    • How Visa Makes Money Without Lending a Dollar   How De Beers Convinced the World Diamonds Are Forever    • Видео