Why?
All I can see is how this would save a lot of energy in transporting by making it easier to stack things together, as well as making it a little more difficult for companies to play games with packaging size and form factor.
If you use standard reusable sizes, cleaning and sanitazation requirements must come first, and it will inevitably be heavier as well.
I suppose the situation is much different in B2B and bulk orders (like gastronomy), when the packaging is not also fulfilling a marketing role.
> If you use standard reusable sizes, cleaning and sanitazation requirements must come first, and it will inevitably be heavier as well.
Yes. But it will not be throwaway anymore. It would be great if someone did the math on that. My gut tells me that even the repeated extra cost of shipping additional mass around is much less than it costs to make and dispose of packaging (the bulk of it being probably in the disposal, which producers externalize on the society, and so they prefer churning out new packaging).
I'm at work so I cannot give you a source, but look at the environmental impact of producing meat vs the packaging.
Switching to reusable containers sounds wonderful, but it's a very hard sell. Standardized sizes would waste a lot of energy in transporting, and proper washing and sanitization will add a significant environmental impact as well, either by energy use, or production of chemicals. Whether or not this is a net positive remains to be determined.
/edit: spelling mistakes