Weight and pressure

Weight, and the shelf against it

On this page11

Why weight dominates the craft Which makes capacity the weight lever The archetype gets this right And the shelf sits above it Which is the useful number to give a buyer Material matters less than people think PP for anything that goes near heat Jars for the dry things Clear so you can see what it is Buy one size and repeat it References

189 of 453 containers are 120 mL or under. That is the shelf a hiker can use.

Why weight dominates the craft

Everything is carried, all day, by one person. A gram saved is carried nowhere, and a hiker will drill holes in a toothbrush to make the point.

Which makes capacity the weight lever

Not the material. An empty bottle weighs little; the contents weigh what they weigh, so carrying 30 mL instead of 120 is the saving that matters.

The archetype gets this right

15 to 120 mL, which is exactly the range a decant lives in. The window is one of the better ones in the taxonomy.

And the shelf sits above it

Median 177 mL. 189 containers at 120 or under, 86 at 60 or under, 27 at 30 or under and 8 at 15 or under. The bottom of the range is thin.

Which is the useful number to give a buyer

For a spice kit of six containers at 10 to 15 mL, 8 is the honest answer about this shelf. For a 60 mL soap decant, 86 is a real shelf.

Material matters less than people think

201 PET, 126 HDPE, 76 PP. All three are light. The 50 glass containers are the ones to rule out, not for weight alone but because glass in a pack is a liability.

PP for anything that goes near heat

76 PP containers and 31 PP single wall jars. A camp kitchen is hot and polypropylene tolerates it better than PET.

Jars for the dry things

218 jars on this shelf, which is nearly half of it. A spice kit, a supplement powder and a fire starter are all dry, and the jars serve them better than the archetype's narrow mouth suggests.

Clear so you can see what it is

114 clear containers. In a pack, at dusk, six identical white jars is a guessing game and a clear wall is the label.

Buy one size and repeat it

A kit of six identical containers packs flat and uses one spare cap. Six different ones is the mistake, and it is the one a catalog with 453 options encourages.

References

The Davis Pack Supply catalog, measured 18 October 2026. The camping and backpacking shelf is 979 rows: 453 containers and 526 closures. 15 mL to 500 mL with a median of 177; 8 containers at 15 mL or under, 27 at 30 or under, 86 at 60 or under, 189 at 120 or under, 394 at a pint or under. 201 PET, 126 HDPE, 76 PP, 50 glass. 221 bottles, 218 jars, 12 tubs and pails, 1 jug, 1 tube. 134 white, 114 clear, 66 natural, 52 amber. Closures: 369 continuous thread, 26 dome lids, 26 spouted, 19 flip top, 19 lug and twist, 18 child resistant, 11 liners and sealing discs, 9 phenolic, 7 spice caps, 7 buttress, 6 round tubs, and no disc tops, lotion pumps or fine mist sprayers.

The archetype behind this shelf is store-liquid-decant: 15 to 120 mL, narrow mouth, flip top or disc top or lotion pump or fine mist, PET and HDPE, cold fill, thin, aqueous, poured, with "travel decant, leakproof under pressure change is the whole requirement" as its stated reason. All seven leaves sit on it, including fuel decant and fire starter, which are neither aqueous nor cold.

Written from 40 CFR 152.500 and from the catalog as it stood on 18 October 2026. No log-reduction performance figures appear anywhere in this property, because the commonly cited numbers come from an EPA guide standard rather than a codified rule. Forest and park food storage orders are issued locally and are not summarized. Nothing here is a fuel bottle or a bear-resistant container.