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Bulk buying is a great method of shopping that allows you to purchase consciously. Bulk buying comes in many different forms, such as package-free bulk bins, produce wholesalers and even stocking up on sale items. While all have their pros and cons, our main focus today is buying literal larger, ‘bulk’ items. That is, items you’d normally buy but in greater quantities at a time.
Before we go into the pros of bulk buying, we did want to highlight some of the cons people can face when buying bulk products. First of all, you need to pay for a larger quantity all at once, which can highly increase the upfront cost (although usually a cost-effective way to shop, in the long-run!)
Of course, budgeting is an effective way to combat this potential deterrent, and help save you money in the long term. Obviously, bulk items are, as the name suggests, sometimes a little more bulky, so having limited storage space may make storing excess product trickier than expected. Knowing your limits and going for medium bulk options (because bulk buying can be flexible to you!) can help get you the benefits of bulk without compromising your space. If you do want to try and get the best benefits with bulk buying, however, you could get your friends and family on board to split your purchases, helping you save even more money and time!
Speaking of saving money and time, bulk buying reduces both significantly. Starting with time, we’ve found one big misconception is that bulk buying must be done in-store. While this can be the case, many stores (including our own) allow you to bulk buy online. Both in-person and online save you time as you don’t need to make multiple trips, you just need to find the time to buy it once and those pesky weekly shops are reduced to every few months or a couple times a year depending on your preference and circumstances!
In terms of saving money, bulk items are usually highly discounted as they don’t require extra packaging, worker packing and overall cost less to transport as they take up less room (more on this point later). Take an example from our bulk items, soap. Our single bar of soap is $4.95 whereas a pack of four is only $18. That’s already cheaper than buying four single soaps at individual times without considering time and shipping costs. And trust us, you’re going to go through four bars of soap fast. The real savings, however, come when you consider our actual bulk soap products. For $95, you can buy our 24 soap pack, saving over $20 at once. Or, you could buy our 48 soap pack for $175, saving you a whopping $60. To put it into perspective, if you were to buy 48 bars of soap individually, that’d cost you $237.60 over the course of your purchases. All of these products contain the same soap, made with natural ingredients and being able to last for years. The only difference is the latter two are bulk items! Crazy, right?
We mentioned above you could share the cost of bulk products to save money, time and space, but what about using them as super cheap gifts? Sometimes, a single person doesn’t need 48 soaps at once like, say, a family does, but what anyone can use more of are inexpensive, practical gifts that anyone could use. Imagine you’re going about your life and something unexpected comes up that requires a gift from you. A teachers gift? Done. A friends birthday? Done. Stocking stuffers at Christmastime? Why not? A random neighbour moves in across the street? Welcome friends!
Bulk purchases could also make great party favours, guest supplies or really anything you need them to be. Just do your research and the opportunities are endless.
Individually wrapped items and single use products are the single biggest contributors to plastic pollution. Buying in bulk, which thoroughly decreases packaging and overall plastic waste, can have dramatic impacts on even just your individual rubbish mass for the month. Further, bulk items usually come in recyclable packaging only, disregarding the need for single use plastics entirely. If you do bulk buy in store, you may also find there are options to bring your own reusable containers, or use compostable packaging like paper bags. This limits our impact on the environment, as well as allowing us to customise our use of the bulk products with things like refillable dispensers or cute dish trays that don’t need to be thrown out after every use.
The other thing we mentioned above was the saving costs of transport due to reduced space. As The Source Bulk Foods says:
“Bulk goods require less overall transportation because there are less packaging components that must be produced and transported prior to being filled. The transportation of bulk products is more efficient because they can be packed more densely on a truck in large sacks and boxes as opposed to individually packaged items.”
This, in turn, means that there are less planes, ships and other modes of transport producing toxic emissions that are needed to transport the same amount of product. Greenhouse gas emissions happen at every stage of the product journey, but bulk buying helps reduce them from the moment the product needs packaging.
Another great benefit of bulk buying is convenience as it reduces the risk of running out of items when we need them most. Take all purpose surface cleaner for example. Sometimes, life just feels so busy that we struggle to keep up with it all, so the last thing we need is to make a mess because we weren’t focusing and realise we don’t have any more cleaner to fix it! Having a bulk supply usually means you have extra of your favourite products in storage, so nothing can catch you by surprise.
Buying in bulk also means that when there are shortages (anyone remember that toilet paper shortage, which evolved into almost all consumables and was horrifying to live through?!!!), you don’t need to stress about finding products or reworking your entire lifestyle to try and minimise how much you need something. If the Covid-19 pandemic taught us anything, it's always better to be a bit more prepared than we think we need to be.
That concludes our best benefits of bulk buying, and why it is better to buy in bulk. If you know any more, connect with us on our socials and share your knowledge! Or, if you want to learn some tips for bulk purchasing, read this.
