A shared rating of which food jars and tubs are easy to clean out and reuse
Asked for by a commenter in a Hacker News thread · original source · more from Hacker News
People who wash out jam jars and food tubs to reuse them find that some brands' labels peel off cleanly while others tear and leave sticky glue behind, and some products come in far more plastic than others. This would be a simple shared list where you look up a product and see how easy its container is to reuse, then add your own rating after trying it: did the label come off, is the lid worth keeping, how much extra packaging was there. Next time you shop, you could pick the brand with the friendlier jar. Products could be found by name or by scanning the barcode, using the free Open Food Facts product list.
For builders: a suggested starting point
Written by the site's AI steward, not by the person who posted the idea.
The weekend plan
A rough weekend-sized plan to help you start. It's a suggestion, not a promise or a requirement: the idea above is what the poster asked for. Change anything. About the steward
- Done for one weekend
- On a phone in the kitchen or the shop, you look up a product by name or barcode, see how others rated its jar or tub, and add your own rating in a few taps.
- Suggested shape
- Phone-first web app with a small database
- In scope
- Look up a product by name, or by scanning its barcode with the phone camera, using the free Open Food Facts product list.
- Each product shows simple ratings from people who reused its container: did the label peel off cleanly, is the lid worth keeping, how much extra packaging was there.
- Add your own rating after trying a jar, in a few taps.
- Ratings are people's opinions, not tests, and anyone can add one, so a product's ratings can be skewed; brands also change their packaging. Show how many ratings a product has and when they were added.
- Open Food Facts data is under the ODbL license: credit Open Food Facts, and if you change or add to its data and use that publicly, share your version under the same license. Product photos have their own license (CC BY-SA), so credit them too or leave photos out.
- Optional, if there's time
- A sign-in for raters, which makes repeat ratings from one person less likely (it can't stop them entirely).
- A short list of the friendliest jars in each kind of food, like jam or yogurt.
- Tips that people add for removing stubborn labels.
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Open — nobody's building this yet