If you can’t outright solve a problem you shouldn’t try to improve the situation >:(
How is this improving the situation. Do people only throw away the caps? I think this is just some stupid law so that they can say they tried. I still think soda cans are just a better solution and make it mandatory that companies recycle their own waste.
I still think soda cans are just a better solution
That actually sounds like a good idea to me, or you could make them similar in design to those water-bottles that have the cap meant to stay with the bottle, shown in:
this image (branding removed)
Whereas the existing design is similar to the old pull tabs that were on cans which caused ecological damage when people discarded them on the ground.
I wish they’d instead go after the big companies doing the majority of the damage, but I suppose this’s where the cards lay. (For now)
I think its easily solvable you just make it mandatory that companies recycle their own bottles and they WILL find a way to make it cheao.
Did you reply to the wrong comment?
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The parks in my area have far more bottle caps on the ground than bottles
Do people only throw away the caps?
Well yes, many throw caps and bottle separately and the people that throw their trash anywhere will certainly not care about the caps.
make it mandatory that companies recycle their own waste.
Lol.
In what country is it mandatory for companies to recycle soda cans ?
Germany, actually lol
Just to get this straight, in Germany if coca cola sells a can of coke to a consumer and that it is somehow returned to them through a deposit scheme or something they are legally bound to recycle entirely that aluminium foil ?
If that’s the case that’s amazing but in many countries in Europe a lot of effort is done to collect recyclable stuff but that certainly does not mean it will be recycled.
There is a vast difference between something being mandatory to put in the recycling bin and it actually being recycled for real.
Sweden.
Denmark lol
unfortunately yes, i’ve seen lots of just caps thrown around as litter
Or just introduce the Pfand system Europe wide
Pant is great.
It sucks so much to not be able to throw cans into recycling and be done with it.
Every week or so I carry some stinky bag of beer cans to these machines and I hate it.
Other countries should not be forced to implement this.
Soda cans have lots of plastic in them.
What? Soda Cans are made of aluminum, aren’t they?
They need a liner on the inside mostly epoxy or polymer.
Ah I thought only paper products needed an inner coating like that. Is there a concern of it oxidizing or something?
Aluminum is poisonous in larger amounts and a lot of can contents are pretty acidic. You could probably line them with non reactive metals like gold, but thst would be very expensive in comparison.
They have a plastic lining to stop the soda from tasting like metal.
Bummer. I guess glass it is then.
Glass because the added weight ends up being less eco-friendly than plastics during transport. So it’s better to only get glass from local distributers. Also the recycling process of glass is fairly eco unfriendly too.
Aluminum cans might be the best we have for now. I have seen paper milk carton style containers come up more often. As well as plant based plastics.
What? Don’t be ridiculous. Of course you should still try to improve the situation. That’s like saying trucks that get 7MPG are bad for the environment but don’t bother making trucks that get 20MPG because it still runs on fossil fuels.
It was sarcasm
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There’s a reason the saying goes “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle”
Reducing comes first, then reuse what you can, and recycle what you can’t.
Refuse > Reduce > Reuse > Repurpose > Recycle
5 Rs rule
What’s the difference between Refuse and Reduce here? I always took Reduce to mean using as little plastic as possible, which to m3 would include refusing the use of single-use plastics.
Same with Reuse and Repurpose: Reuse it however you can, regardless of its original purpose.
3 Rs has the rhetoric benefit of being a tricolon, which helps with keeping it concise and memorable.
Would you like a plastic bag for your shopping?
Refuse: No thanks.
Reduce: I’ll take just 1 bag and stuff it all in there, don’t need 2.
Repurpose: it’s ok because I’ll use this bag as a bin liner.
Curious. To me, reducing to zero is reducing still, so bringing my own cloth bag instead counts as “reduce” for me.
Thanks for your take, though!
Refuse: use/buy an alternative
Reduce: if you have to use it (or buy it), use /buy as little as possible / until there’s an alternative
Refuse is the worst possible word to use here, given its alternate meaning.
There is a patch of garbage on the pacific the size of a small continent but its still legal to sell single use plastic containers.
How many years do these people think we have?
Yes, but now the soda bottles in that patch will have their caps attached. So that’s sort of, well, I suppose … you may have a point.
More seriously I’m fully convinced that this cap attachment nonsense is purely to save coca cola et. al. further costs in recycling bottles. Like it’s still a small step forward, but it wouldn’t happen if corpos weren’t saving a dime.
Not long. That’s why we recycle. Part of that is these stupid hinges.
I don’t like them, but we need them.
Plastic recycling is a scam mate. Most of the plastic things you throw out are gonna get burned or end up somewhere for ever.
They even made the little symbols look like a recycling sign, so you can feel good about yourself at the store.
The evil companies. Ah yes a recycle icon with numbers but you presume it’s fine. Nope. It’s literally just the type of plastic.
:/. Corporates are evil.
Yes, but look how colorful and attractive they made our demise.
Europe has laws that recycling companies have to state how much % per weight ends up wherever. They charge you in Germany a deposit of ~15 cent per single use plastic bottle and you have to return it in mint condition in special recycling machines to get that money back. I’ve heard that Austria wants to make that 25 cent over there in 2025 - that’s 30% of what a bottle of water costs in a German Aldi.
Why does anyone buy water in bottles? I mean if you get clean water in a tap its absolutely pointless.
My local tap water is disgusting. A filter might make it safe to drink, but nothing makes it stop tasting gross. I’ll cook with it and drink it with flavoring but I won’t just drink it by itself.
depends on your country, here in Mexico we don’t have tap water we need to buy water bottles or a water jug. I’m not sure why we don’t have tap water really 🤔
_Insert conspiracy theory about fluoride here _
I only buy salt that has flouride in it, and I make sure that guests can read the label from where they sit. I call it “Conspiracy Theorist Coverblower“. And I salt very little.
You ever see a commie drink a glass of water Mandrake?
Some places do have truely awful tap water even if it is technically drinkable. I’ve been places where the tap water reeked of sulphur and no filter would take out the taste short of an RO filter. We always had to buy drinking water there. At the same time though we always bought water in gallon jugs rather than the individual bottles.
Americans! All Americans carry around their bottle of water.
Ah yes, a YouTube video.
Hope you ever find yourself in Western Europe, where we actually do recycle.
You do? As in you put plastics in a yellow bin from where it goes straight to the dump?
Im from Poland btw. We also „recycle” here.
Dutchy here. Rotterdam specifically.
PET is recycled as in: every supermarket has an drop off point, giving you back 25cnt for every large bottle, 15cnt for small and cans.
Plastic in the general garbage is separated (not 100%, but still) and either separated (polystyrene is easy to detect and seperate for instance) or sold to companies that repurpose them (more and more of those white triangle things in the corners of roads are repurposed strengthened plastics now).
I’m sure plenty will find its way to either landfill (that we don’t have much) or gets burnt. But it’s not as bad as the US, which was my point in the first place.
A YouTube video by Rollie Williams, mind you - Holder of a masters degree in climate science and policy from Colombia University.
Another symbolic act so that they can pretend they did something for the environment and don’t have to actually tackle the major problems which could cut into profits of big companies.
Also anyone got fucked over by the bottle cap spinning in the way of the pour spilling drink all over the table?
No but I’ve had the “pull the cap away not realising it’s attached and pull the bottle of milk out of my hand, sending it crashing to the floor” thing, that was fun
That’s a genius move as well. Nicely done.
I literally made a video for my friends of that
sorry if it’s a google photo link
I don’t even understand what the theory is. Plastic is plastic. What does it matter if it’s attached to the bottle?
Supposedly these would end up on the street or somewhere else outside of the waste processing system. So they want you to throw the cap out together with the bottle
Yeah like the paper straws through a plastic lid. The part that gets chewed and wet with digestive enzymes is some limp paper yet the simple lid can be as plastic as they want.
You have to twist It so It stays in place
This explains a lot.
It’s also annoying because my recycling bin for plastics wants the bottle but for some reason not the caps. They are to go in rhe general waste
This is because bottle caps are ordinarily too small to be useful recyclable material, as when separated they are hard to get together in enough quantity.
While attached to the bottle, they should be viable recyclables.
Someone should tell my council.
My pure guess with no evidence was perhaps they were made of a different plastic
Sadly, a very low percentage of plastic gets recycled anyway. In my country recycling company stats say only 10% - 20% of collected plastic is recycled. But the reality is much worse than that.
It turns out that nearly all of even that small percentage just gets shipped to a poor country for recycling because it’s too expensive to recycle here. Once it’s been shipped it’s considered “recycled” but since recycling is expensive the company receiving it just takes the money and quietly landfills it in their own country.
The reality is that plastic recycling barely happens at all.
Largely due to the fact that people confuse resin ID codes as recyclable labels and don’t know which types of plastics can be recycled in thier area.
Even the theoretically recyclable ones don’t usually get recycled because it’s economically unviable in most cases.
that explains why those all suddenly become attached
Oh, that’s why every beverage now has these shitty caps. Worth it if it helps fight pollution tho
well, it is just annoying
I mean that’s less stupid than “Paper Straws”
they are not paper?
Some of them are for sure.
Pasta straws for the win. They are much better than paper straws in that they’re still biodegradable and they don’t go limp after a few sips. Have been wondering if they pose a risk to people suffering from gluten allergies/intollerances.
I’m still flabbergasted that neither France,
the Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria nor Poland have Pfand (aka a money back deposit thing) for plastic bottles. It’s such an integrated part of my life, that I wonder why other countries haven’t adopted it.Netherland got them now on:
- Beer (crates)
- Big plastic bottles (±1,5L)
- Small plastic bottles
- Aluminium Soda Cans (Newest one)
It’s called ‘statiegeld’ here and we got them as long as I can remember. It’s is just recently it also covers the small plastic bottles and soda cans.
Yeah I live in US and there are people around here going around picking out of people’s trash for cans and plastic bottles probably to get the few cents that they’re worth.
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Then I misremembered. My bad.
Am I the only one who loves the new cap design?
Yes youre literally the only one
It’s fucking annoying and it’s completely backwards. The cap is constantly in the way when I try to pour the contents into a glass, so shit spills everywhere. I just snip the plastic umbilical cord with some scissors or rip the cap off.
Another nonsensical bill. Add it to the pile.
If you can’t handle a slightly different lid design, you’re going to hate it when you have to actually make lifestyle changes for us to not all die.
I can handle it by circumventing the pointless change. Nice slippery slope you set up there tho.
It’s not pointless. It’s one step of many to get us off destructive products. You’re going out of your way to make it harder to recycle and to make it more dangerous for wildlife. Ideally you should have already been avoiding plastics, but I guess the government will have to drag you kicking and screaming into living sustainably and for the future. It sure would be great if people could take an ounce of personal responsibility for what needs to happen, so we don’t need slow government interventions that will be too little too late.
You have no idea about how I live and yet you make snide remarks, bold assumptions and complain about my apparent lack of “personal responibility”.
I barely ever use my car, I buy my fresh produce at the local farmer’s market, I reject plastic bags and take my backpack when shopping, I recycle plastics, glass, paper/carton, gardening waste in seperate containers.
So fuck right off with your dumbass lecture, you holier-than-thou twat.
Ah so that’s why all caps suddenly suck :/. stubbornly pulls cap off of the bottle
If you pull hard enough the cap comes off just like before. Very effective legislation and use of resources.
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Who tf is throwing the cap away, but keeps the bottle?
Hey! I’m keeping the cap. Bottle is needed for rockets
Scissors also work as well if you’re really hellbent on separating them. And if the EU decides to ban Scissors you can use a Knife or glass.
My girlfriend can’t screw them back on properly so right now she only uses each drinks bottle once
I hate the things so much because they hurt to use, can’t really be used one-handed and also make it difficult to drink from the bottle because of the weird angles they implicate.
So I’ve been cutting the caps off and cutting the little limbs off and making what was previously one piece of plastic into three, which I obviously also hate doing.
In the past I would always screw the lid back on before binning it, either to trap the air out or for the sake of completeness, so in my particular case this policy is very much the worst of all worlds, I hope the data shows that I’m an edge case though if they’re passing it into law.
my biggest pain in 2023…
Every cap should just be like those water bottle caps that pop up and down, and then use less plastic by making them unremovable.
Making them unremovable would use more plastic. A lot of people reuse those sports cap bottles.
