I know they’re supposed to be good for the environment. But… Holy smokes they drive me up the wall. They really do!
I had no trouble adapting when aluminum can pull-tabs got replaced by push-tabs, because it was pretty much the same movement, and I could see the immediate advantage of not getting cut by a pull-tab.
But the tethered cap is fighting decades of muscle memory in me: I’m used to taking the cap off with one hand and keeping it there while taking a swig with the other. Now I unscrew the cap with one hand, but I still have to hold the cap so it’s out of the way. It feels like drinking in handcuffs each and every time…
So unlike the pull-tab, the tethered plastic bottle cap is one of those compulsory eco solutions that constantly make you feel ever-so-slightly more miserable all the time, and I hate that because ecology only works when it brings something of value both to people and to the environment.
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Plastic needs to die. There’s no point in designing a cap that goes into recycling reliably when we know recycling plastic just gets dumped in third world countries.
PET bottles are actually the most recycled or their plastic upcycled. But yeah, needs to die.
Maybe, but PET still contributes to the microplastics problem and I wouldn’t be surprised if the recycling process adds more PET microplastics to the atmosphere so they can be carried around the planet.
Yeah, PET is great for recycling.
Here, 87% of all PET bottles are recycled.
wherew is that? come on dude if youre going to flex on your country’s recyling rate with a specific percentage write the name of the dang country please
I live in the Nordics which all have a pretty good recycling rate overall.
the just started doing pfand return here in ireland for cans and plastic bottles, but not glass bottles (we throw those into a bottle bank)
Pant is great.
I don’t understand why soft drinks are even sold in plastic bottles anymore. Cans work perfectly fine. Sure you might want to re-seal the lid or something but if that’s the case just buy a reusable drink container.
plastic is cheap i guess?
Ding ding ding. Yet again we’re paying for their externalized costs.
Aluminum cans are great but still use a plastic lining, so I’m not sure overall whether it comes out better. You still get microplastics.
I’m so fucking tired.
It’s estimated the fishing industry is losing around 400 metric tonnes of fishing gear into Norwegian waters every year.
Now we are punished for this by attaching the stupid caps to the bottles. Why are we not able to fix problems in this society hellbent for self destruction?
Why are every problem pushed down on the working class just wanting to enjoy a soda in this capitalistic hellscape.
Attaching the caps to the bottles fixes a problem.
The lost fishing gear is another problem.
Fixing one will not fix the other. Fixing one helps. Fixing both helps more.
So. In Norway we have this great system for returning used bottles for cash. We get 0.2$ for a 0.5 liter bottle. People are returning the bottle with the cap on. Seeing bottle caps laying around isn’t a thing.
Instead of attaching the cap to the bottle. Make a return system for the bottles. People are not systematically seperating the bottle and the cap as the cap keeps the sugary residue left inside the bottle in place instead of in the bag you carry them with to the store for returning them for that sweet cash.
Attaching the cap is a solution looking for a problem.
Having travelled a lot around in Europe I have never seen bottle caps laying the street alone. People throw them together or not at all.
This is bureaucracy time spent on caps instead of actual problems. So they could focus on actual issues instead of this shit. It’s a testament to how they blame every issue on random people instead of the industries inventing new ways to fuck up any ecosystem.
This is classic greenwashing. It’s the smallest possible gesture a soda company can make to show that they “care about the environment” while not making any actual change to be more eco-friendly.
Same thing with those awful paper straws. Are you really asking me to believe that a massive burger chain can neutralize their footprint by giving you a straw that turns soggy in minutes? The straws were never the real problem, but it’s the smallest possible step they can take to seem eco-friendly.Yes. Deposits for recyclable bottles also fixes a problem. Seems like we are fixing problems all over the place :)
We also have that in Michigan. You still see bottles and cans places. Historically, there have a lot of ‘reward programs’ that incentivised keeping bottle caps separate (either from the company or occasionally locally for reasons). I also distinctly remember it being advertised that bottle needed to be capless for recycling, so we always removed the caps and tossed them. Only recently have I seen verbiage on bottles requesting them to be recycled with caps on, which I usually forget to do because it’s habit to toss the caps.
Cool. The more you know.
Funny how there are such different practices.
They might not get discarded separately, but do they get recycled separately?
I always loosen caps when throwing them in the green bin so the bottles will compress more easily. Others might just throw them in separately or they might even pop off once compacted.
I don’t know how much of a problem having them separated might be (I’m just wondering out loud) but I could see how keeping things together and not having lots of small fiddly bits in mixed loads prior to sorting could be beneficial.
Sounds like it doesn’t take much contamination for recycling companies to redirect whole loads to landfill, so it it helps there it’s good I guess?But… Squeeze the air out of the bottle and twist the cap back on and it suddenly stays more compressed. Literally sealing the vacuum and the sugar. And the caps are generally the same plastic material.
The issue with recyclers sending batches to landfill is that they are a for profit company so if no one is buy the materials or it’s more costly to process than the final product then it’s just tossed. We avoided that by sending it all wholesale to other countries who realized that it was also cheaper to use raw materials. And they didn’t want our unsorted garbage labeled as recyclables.
This is mostly unnecessary and like swapping to new straw manufacturing or thicker plastic bags to be “reusable” actually more detrimental in the short term or not beneficial in a meaningful way.
Why do i have he impression that problems only get solved if the solution doesn’t damage a specific class of people?
You know what would fix that problem? Not using plastic. It doesn’t actually get recycled no matter what doodad they attach to it.
Wouldn’t it be amazing if there was some easily-recyclable material that humans have been using since Ancient Rome at least that they used to mass-produce drinks in all the time but don’t anymore?
Another fix for the problem! Lets do them all! Every bit counts :)
Its the same with the paper straws while disposable electronic cigarettes are still allowed, which not only contain plastics, but also electronics and a rechargeable lithium cell.
All the while a reusable vape works just as well, while paper straws just suck and they even contain plastic as well.
I mean you can also get reusable metal straws the same as a reusable vape.
I like the pasta straws as a concept, stays solid AND something will eat it when disposed of. Win win!
I think that little piece of plastic doesnt really make a huge impact, its not a lot of plastic and we have so many other places where we could guide manufacturers to include less plastic in packaging.
Its much more energy intensive to produce a disposable vape, they contain more plastic, the battery has to be produced and its unlikely they end up in electronics recycling, where they belong.
I haven’t experienced these bottles since I’m in the US, but by that picture; are they not easy to just rip off so it’s normal again?
Fairly easy to rip off. But they sometimes leave some sharp pieces of plastic poking your lips. Also it’s annoying.
Would probably be better if the tether was longer.
An industry coordinating to make tethered caps isn’t a result of “capitalism” in any way at all.
At some point you gotta recognize capitalism is a catch-all boogeyman to you, not a real thing.
I’m convinced those do very little for the environment. There was some really smart executive at the plastic bottle company who made this up so they can charge more from beverage companies.
Even better. All the bottling and filling machine manufacturers could sell expensive upgrade packages for the beverage companies to even be able to work with the new caps. In our case we even had to completely retire two older machines because there are incompatible and buy new ones. Great for the environment for sure.
They are making a ton of similar laws already. So the bottle caps alone might not do that much but those all laws combined are doing a lot
Unless we remove plastic from the environment entirely, this is the smallest band-aid available on a massive gushing chest wound.
Yup. This is the last vestiges of the diminishing returns of the doomed strategy of blaming consumers for climate change.
Whaaat? Nooo. Remember that time we banned straws and it was gonna be the big push we needed to start real change but then everyone just predictably patted themselves on the back and did basically nothing ever again? 😀
To all companies
just stop using plastic
To governments:
Plastic tax.
EU Directive 2019/904
Under the Directive, drinks will only be allowed to be sold in plastic containers if the cap remains attached to the container
Funnily enough that directive talks about sustainability, reduction of single use plastics and whatnot. And connected bottle cap is there as a stop gap measure to prevent ocean pollution. But manufacturers stuck to that as be all end all solution. The rest of the directive be damned.
I haven’t looked too much into the research behind this, but personally, I haven’t noticed loose bottle caps as a huge issue. Actually, I notice more whole bottles thrown out, with caps on them, and this is even in a country where you get money for returning bottles! Not to mention plastic fast food cup caps!
Why would they? There’s no financial reason for them to do so. Whatever they do, you are to blame for consuming. It’s not them wrapping everything in plastic it’s you who didn’t recycle. Screw the fact there is no recycling containers around where you live.
It’s also not practical at all. Plastic is amazing for food handling due to the way it forms airtight seals so easily.
Lol too true
Imagine a system where for each bottle produced but not recycled, plant has to pay 1000$ fine. And just let them recycle any bottle to get rid of the fine. Companies would cut each other’s throats to recycle as much as possible. I could imagine big shots investing huge amounts of money into recycling so they can hurt other manufacturers. Many would switch to glass to become untouchable, but that would only mean those who still use plastic would have to try even harder to offset their production. Am assuming problem would be solved within a year.
My city is awesome and recently decided to just stop recycling glass. You know, because we love plastic and why would we want to reward companies who use glass, the much easier thing to reuse and recycle.
It’s very hard to have glass in single-stream recycling. Glass inevitably shatters and gets mixed with tiny bits of paper making it worse than new glass and really increases the work required for the whole recycling process. It’s great to recycle in a dual-stream system, but if you can put your glass and paper in the same bin, it’s about as difficult to recycle as plastic is.
Snap!
What would you suggest they use instead?
Right? What other possible materials could they use? Prior to plastic, we just cupped our hands and had people pour beverages into them, or directly into our mouths.
Plastics have been revolutionary in keeping our hands and faces from getting sticky. I, for one, refuse to go back to the days of sucking off the tap.
Coca Cola used to use glass bottles, it is a material that is completely recyclable. Why change it?
Because recycling glass is more expensive than not recycling plastic.
Plastic is recycleable aswell. In Finland like 98% of plastic bottles are returned to the stores and new bottles are made of them. Glass is heavy and fragile and I don’t remember ever seeing a glass bottle that’s bigger than half litre or one that you can put the cap back on.
Glass is infinitely recyclable though, plastic deteriorates regularly overtime
Glass weight quite a lot which might make them worse for their transport 🤷
It’s also obviously more expensive for everyone.
Except PET from plastics bottles which is the only common plastic that is fully depolymerizable/ repolymerizable, instead of simply being remeltable.
Replaceable caps definitely exist, they are common on glass soft drink bottles where I am. They look just like the plastic lids but in thin sheet metal, complete with perforations and ring.
Some of the screwtop beer bottle style reseal pretty well too.
Not to worry. One can cork their bottle for all the sanitary and convenience benefits of keeping a variety of corks lying around and definitely not breeding bacteria in them.
Better than recyclable, glass is reusable.
You can just send the bottle back to the factory, the factory washes it and refill it.
Sucking off the tap in winter when the water is crisp af is amazing.
Glass bottles are fun, I remember when beer mostly came in glass bottles. Glass shards everywhere and the metal caps being everywhere. Such a nice solution.
There are a few things they could try. You can get biodegradable bottles, you could use glass or metal, there are cardboard bottles and silicon and even ceramic.
You could also change the way we buy these drinks from bottles we buy and throw away to containers we keep and refill from dispensers. The infrastructure isn’t there for it, but with the amount of money the major drinks companies make its not unreasonable to assume they could afford to implement it.
And arguing that these alternatives are not practical is a wasted effort because an alternative IS needed to stop mass plastic waste and protect the environment so we need to get used to the bar being set at a different height.
If you mean biodegradable plastic then you should look into it, its micro plastic mixed with a biodegradable fibre so end result is we’re still left with micro plastic.
but every other suggestion is top tier!
I love glass and choose it over plastic every time, but there is the argument that using glass causes more CO2 emissions because of the extra weight.
You could also change the way we buy these drinks from bottles we buy and throw away to containers we keep and refill from dispensers. The infrastructure isn’t there for it, but with the amount of money the major drinks companies make its not unreasonable to assume they could afford to implement it.
You mean the thing EU is about to do right now?
I believe so, yes.
Glass bottles with pop tops
Or cans…
Cans are better but still use a plastic coating of sorts to line the inside
Hollowed tree trunk
Hey it’s that simple, just stop using plastic. Lol
The idea is solid, the execution is just awful.
If it had just a bit more slack, at least you will be able to close the bottle without having to jerk it. Add even a little more, and you would be able to drink from the bottle without it poking out your eye.
“Own brands” which are theoretically lower quality accidentally executed this idea much better - to cut costs they use less material for the “strings” which allows the cap to be placed not so close to the bottle
It does shit for the environment, no one throws caps away separately while recycling the bottle. Most coloured plastics aren’t recycled anyways. Like 80% of all microplastic is from car tires.
It was a very common plastic to be found on beaches. So they wanted to tether it to prevent garbage shit in the ocean.
But isn’t the tether still too thin and fragile to remain connected forever?
If you drop a tethered cap on the beach, a few weeks in the sun, getting polished by sand, and that cap is seperating from the ring, and how does that fix the problem?
I think it only needs to be connected until the bottle is collected, which I’d imagine it being plastic and the tether being surprisingly sturdy it will do alright
That makes sense, we don’t have a proper bottle collection service in my area, everything goes in the mixed recycling bin, bagged up, it sits in a recycling landfill for a few months then if no one takes up the processing contract it gets scoop-diggered into the general landfill. (and the processing contracts rarely get picked up, we used to ship everything to China) During this process bags are ripped open and plastic debris gets everywhere, and heavy rains will wash it into the environment.
https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC108181
Top categories of litter on EU beaches (table pdf page 81): #1 and 2 large and small plastic/polysterine pieces 14.90 and 13.83%, #3 strings and cords 13.75%. #4 cigarette butts 6.14%, #5 cough “Plastic caps and lids (drinks, chemicals, detergents (non-food), unidentified) / plastic rings from bottle caps/lids” 5.27%.
Bottles are a way smaller category so by tethering the caps you should get rid of all the caps without a bottle. There’s then another impact assessment (please don’t ask me for a link) looking at impact on the bottling industry and beverage market and it was deemed negligible, so Brussels went ahead and mandated tethered caps, comes into force in July.
This isn’t a question of “is the impact of the regulation big or small” but “do the pros of regulation outweigh the cons”, and they do. We’re not in the US over here.
This also fucks a little with people collecting caps for selling them off later. Often people with cancer or other terminal diseases. I have zero idea how it is viable, but we see those very often in Poland.
Easy solution: only buy drinks in aluminum cans or glass bottles. World is already drowning in microplastic pollution.
Aluminium cans have a thin plastic liner inside them that’s almost impossible to recycle. I’m not sure if you’re fixing much by switching to cans, here…
Glass is better, but any carbonated drink turns into a bomb if you put more than half a liter or so in a closed glass container.
The plastic liners in and on tins and cans - referred to as lacquer in the industry - don’t impact recycling. When the tins are heated to thousands of degrees for recycling, what is left of the plastic liner, the inks and UV materials; is separated and basically skimmed off, leaving the metal.
https://ekko.world/plastic-lining-on-beverage-food-cans/226751
I had only learned of the liner this year, and have been wondering about this ever since, but always forgot what I wanted to look up every time I got to the search bar. You have rescued me from repeating this for the remainder of the year, and have my thanks. All of the thanks.
TIL
Ah, so instead of recycling it, they burn the plastic away. I suppose carcinogenic smoke isn’t as long-lasting as microplastics?
Yeah because reducing the plastic used by 99% should be scoffed at because AlUmInUm Is NoT rEcYcLAbLe
The thin plastic liner is impossible to recycle. Not the aluminium, obviously.
Cans are great from an energy-consumption point of view when viewing the entire lifecycle of a can.
Aluminium cans have a thin plastic liner inside them that’s almost impossible to recycle
Confidently incorrect as a motherfucker.
You’re saying without hesitation that one of the most recycled and recyclable materials ever created is flat out not recyclable. What the fuck?
The plastic liner is impossible to recycle, isn’t it?
But He is right… Most cans have a layer
That doesn’t make them non-recyclable does it?
It makes it Hard to recycle… Because splitting aluminium from Plastik isnt easy
Yes, it is actually. You melt the aluminum and skim off any remaining plastic and contaminants from the top of the molten aluminum. It’s a standard, millenniums old process for any metal working.
Microplastic is mostly tires and fishing nets so tax those first I think.
Um, aren’t tires like 99.9% rubber?
Not modern tires.
Easy solution: limit yourself to a subset of the market and alter your behavior throughout your life.
Sorry but that doesn’t work. Just 5% of the community does it and everybody else doesn’t care. Laws need to be passed.
Surely making aluminum and glass cans isn’t good for the environment either is it?
Making brand new ones from raw sand/ore isn’t great when you consider the need to mine and refine those into something useable. Lots of energy and effort goes into that part. The difference is that glass and aluminum are essentially infinitely recyclable, while plastic is often not. It takes way less effort and minimal input of new resources to recycle a glass bottle. Hell, with a robust bottle return system you can skip over the recycling part entirely - just send them back to the bottling facility to be cleaned and refilled.
Emphasis on “plastic is often not”. Only PET (#1 on the symbol) can truly be recycled into new material, and usually it’s tossed in with other materials and contaminated enough to make that not possible. There is the reusable path, where plastics are remolded into other purposes, but that’s not “really” recycling and likely ends there for that form to eventually degrade and be trashed.
So just make more things with PET and recycle better, right? I’m guessing there’s limitations on what PET can be used for given its characteristics vs. other plastics, and it is still cheaper to just get new material for new PET rather than recycle. So of course companies are going to go that route.
The interesting thing that I learned not so long ago from the YT channel Climate Town is that people see the triangle symbol with the plastic type number inside and assume it’s recyclable, since that’s the recycle symbol. But it’s not that symbol, it’s just designed similar to give that impression.
Glass is a bugger to recycle as even little admixtures of the wrong stuff can spoil the whole batch. Crush it up and it’s very useful as aggregate in concrete, though. In the case of glass it’s much better to reuse than recycle.
Glas is also heavy meaning it costs more energy to transport, overall PET bottles actually have a quite good environmental and climate record provided they actually get recycled.
Stainless steel is also infinitely recyclable and should be able to be used without liners. Shouldn’t even be heavier than aluminium cans as steel and aluminium are ballpark equally strong by weight (aluminium is stiffer though, not necessarily an advantage). PET is probably going to need less energy of all when recycling, though.
Problem is the stainless steel you’d need to use in order to get the corrosion resistance and non-reactivity with the contents is prohibitively expensive. Cheap stainless steel alloys offer pretty poor corrosion resistance - see the CyberTruck rusting after being rained on a few times.
Hmm. Random price for 1.4571 (probably complete overkill): 20 Euro/kg. Let’s say we use a bit more material than current alu cans, 20g per, that’s 50 cans per kg or 40ct per can quite a bit more than the 25ct deposit we currently have on cans. OTOH that was a random price for 50cm of round stock of the right diameter to get to 1kg, if you’re actually buying it in bulk from the mill it should be quite a bit cheaper (also while you’re at it get sheets). Doubly so if you can feed that mill with very pure recycling material they barely have to touch to get up to spec again.
I’d say it’s doable.
If you use approximately the same amount of material as in an aluminum can, you’re already at 3x the weight of an aluminum can. Stainless is also far less malleable and much more brittle than aluminum, so the minimum wall thickness is much higher for steel. Aluminum can walls are 0.11m thick, whereas the minimum wall thickness for stainless steel alloys is around 0.50mm thick. Meaning you’d need around 4.5 times as much material, making the stainless steel can weigh at least 10 times as much as the average 15 gram aluminum can. A 12-pack of soda would weigh 4.5 pounds more. Now imagine how much transporting that extra weight costs.
Stainless steel is great for reusable stuff, but it’d be impractical at the same scale as aluminum cans.
Well, glass bottles can be washed and reused. The beer industry does this as standard practice.
Glass and aluminum are easier to recycle. Actually recycling these two materials are an order of magnitude easier and cheaper than new material.
Plastic can be recycled, but has a faster degradation rate and the infrastructure isn’t present on the scale of glass and aluminum.
Interesting. How do the beer companies get their bottles back to reuse?
In my area, it through the recycling. Beer bottles have always been worth $0.05, so its worth it to return them to a depot. They also get sorted out if you leave them on the curb or takenby someone who wants the bottle deposit.
Returning them through the deposit makes sense, but I never would think that the recycling pickup people would sort them. Ours just take it to the dump
the recycling pickup people
It’s not, it’s usually retirees or homeless people doing it for cash
Aluminum and glass are natural and just use heat and presses to renew and transform into desired forms.
Plastic takes a lot more processing and isn’t readily recyclable.
I wish there was more water sold in those little milk boxes or aluminum cans.
I had no idea that this is a global phenomenon.
Oh, that’s intentional? I just assumed it was a manufacturing defect where the perforation doesn’t quite detach the cap from the ring.
Same … But i also don’t drink many of these bottles so maybe that’s why
Just twist it the fuck off
This isn’t possible. Every time I tried that it leaves behind 2 nasty & sharp plastic prongs. I’ve found no way to avoid that. And they can’t even be removed, I tried with pliers and a lighter and some sharp plastic spikes will inevitably remain.
jesus christ
this is what you think about: the little plastic points on your plastic soda bottle from where you tore the plastic cap off
I know, right? Talk about first world issues
The caps must be made of different plastic in my country.
When I came across first attached cap, I just ripped it off clean without thinking twice. No problem whatsoever.
I have never discarded a bottle without screwing the cork back, but I guess many people do. Why they would do so, that I cannot fathom.
You can still remove them if you apply enough force.
Oh, ok. Then there’s no problem, I guess?
/s
Pretty much, yeah.
I have never seen one of these. Can you not just like, rip it off?
You can, but there’s enough plastic to make it non-trivial, particularly if you don’t want to risk destroying the cap.
They definitely mess with your muscle memory, both when opening it, and drinking from it.
I tried to take them off a few times until I realized it was on purpose and not a manufacturing defect.
The problem isn’t the force it takes to rip it off: that’s easy enough to do. The problem is that the now-free cap has sharp edges that really hurt, and the plastic bottle now has an annoying dangling plastic tail.
First time hearing about this too . What country is this done in ?
The UK for one. The US too judging the use of $ in other comments.
When they first introduced these, my brother thought it was a defect and ripped it off. It leaves a pretty sharp bit of plastic behind and he cut his hand when he screwed the lid back on. I get the idea behind them (it’s so you have to recycle the cap along with the bottle) but there’s got to be a better way than this. It makes it a pain to pour a drink or drink directly from the bottle.
Pour it from the opposite side to where the cap is attached. That way the awkwardness of pouring the liquid over the attached cap is a none issue. I can only assume that’s what you’ve been trying to do.
I’ve not been trying to pour the drink over the cap, no. It’s just fiddly and you have to make sure the cap doesn’t flap back over the bottle while you’re pouring. I can’t be the only person who finds them inconvenient in this respect? Surely there’s a better way of keeping the cap attached without it getting in the way?
It’s just fiddly and you have to make sure the cap doesn’t flap back over the bottle while you’re pouring.
The new-style tethered caps I’ve seen over here latch in the open position, no dangling no flopping.
Perhaps it’s the make of the bottle the ones I’ve seen (mainly coke zero and iron bru) don’t seem to get in the way, dangle or inconvenience me. The only awkwardness is closing the bottle again, you need to give it a little tug to align it right before closing it. I have to trust that if it even stops 1% of the damage we are doing to the planet then a little awkwardness is acceptable. Because every little helps. I could easily argue they are not doing enough elsewhere before inconveniencing me, but at the same time we all should be doing everything we can to turn back the damage we are doing to the planet, we all live here afterall. Unfortunately not everyone thinks that way so we need to attach bottle tops and drink through paper straws.
In my experience it leaves after a sharp edge when you rip the cap off which then pokes your hands when you try to put the cap back on.
I saw it for the first time last summer. Did a little reading, and according to the news articles, it was a EU directive, but it had been heavily lobbied for by Coca Cola. If I remember right, all EU countries should have implemented the necessary legislature by June this year.
I personally just tear the caps off. Can’t get used to them.
Detach one side of the cap by twisting. This allows turning the cap down to the bottle neck. You can then hold the cap out of the way and the bottle with one hand.
Always wondered why those aluminum bottles I see sometimes with screw on tops are so rare, I feel like they should be used way more. Recyclability of an aluminum can, convenience and form factor of a bottle.
Alu is expensive. Why spend the money if you can injection mold a cap for no money at all, injection mold the blank and blowmold it for a penny
