That's an EU regulation, not a corporate measure. And it has drastically decreased the amount of littered bottle caps, so a good thing.
Littered bottle caps was a problem? Anyway, I hope they do cigarette filters next.
The caps was a problem yes. Not just littering, but also in sorting for recycling, where they'd often end up in the wrong place.
It obviously depends on where and how it's done, but the thing I've heard is that due to (the lack of) weight and size the bottle caps would end up in the paper badges, which would ruin the paper from being recycled. It's better if it follows the bottle. PET bottles (including caps) are shredded, washed and used for new bottles.
Same thing happened to the pull tabs on aluminium cans. Those used to be separate too.
I really like the can tabs. The plastic bottle caps annoy me because they make it harder to screw the cap back on. It needs a bit more innovation in my mind.
That’s an EU regulation, not a corporate measure. And it has drastically decreased the amount of littered bottle caps, so a good thing.
you should only be allowed to buy cigarettes if you can account for all your ciggy butts or pick-up an equal amount.
In Australia they have something called "report a tosser" people who are proven to have littered anything from cigarette buds to plastic bottles and more will be fined to hell and back.
Do like Japan with ammunition. You have to turn in your spent cases to buy more.
Those float in the sea, we don't want that iiuc. Is a different plastic too, way more valuable from a recycling perspective (in Argentina hospitals used to collect caps to melt and make toys for childrens)
I was interested in that whole ecoli eating plastic and producing 95% acetaminophen from it by mass. Maybe we can stop a lot of the plastic from water/soda bottles and just medicate ourselves till our livers shit themselves out our assholes.
Also it means recycle schemes get a % boost because a lot more bottles come back for recycling with their caps. I wouldn't be surprised if the cap is 10-20% of the total plastic in a bottle so caps were missing then that's wasted opportunity.
I remember as a kid when ring pulls on case used to detach and that's the same thing too. I remember my dad metal detecting on the beach and he'd recover dozens of ringpulls because people just tossed them.
I think the cap thing is more about littering because in those countries people litter only the cap for some reason?
When cleaning up beaches and the like, those caps are the litter they found the most.
People lost them or didn't bother to pick them up because they are so small. Unlike with the bottles themselves.
Since they switched to the new caps, the amount of caps found has decreased significantly.
So yes, they work. It is all based on data.
Ofc it is, but stupid fucks have to complain about mundane shit
OP is a 2 day old account. If you haven't figured it out yet, there is a massive anti-progress astroturfing campaign all over the Internet, and it's little shit like this which quietly switches people into cynical brain rot. Memes are bumper sticker politics, and you should always be skeptical of them when they are pushing any narrative.
Not sure if this applied universally, but I remember for years and years the common knowledge was that plastic caps are unrecyclable for some reason, and there used to be separate bins to toss them at recycling centers. That's no longer the case, so keeping the cap connected to the bottle is one way to demonstrate that they should be recycled together.
(By "recycled" I mean most likely shipped to Southeast Asia to then most likely just find their way into the ocean)
I think the kind of plastic used in bottles is one of very few that actually are profitable to recycle. PET, I think. This is actually something recycling companies want. Most other plastic is just burned or shipped somewhere.
IIRC the reason most caps used to be unrecyclable (many still are) is that they had a liner in them made of a different material. Because such caps were composite materials (using different types of plastic for the liner and the cap), they would make an impure product if recycled. The same problem applies if the cap and bottle are different types of plastic, which used to be more common.
(By "recycled" I mean most likely shipped to Southeast Asia to then most likely just find their way into the ocean)
You would be wrong; PET bottles are mostly actually recycled, because it recycles very well (also, why would places go to the effort of setting up a deposit/return scheme for something they aren't actually recycling? Just throw it in the blue bag with all the other plastic that doesn't actually get recycled)
PET bottle recycling is the only part of plastics recycling that actually works. Making sure the bottle caps are also correctly returned to recycling plants is a good goal. Also it makes picking up litter a little easier, because now you only need to pick up one thing instead of two.
Btw, this is why clothing/bags/... made out of recycled plastic bottles is actually a terrible idea, because once the PET is out of the bottle recycling stream it is permanently removed from this recycling loop and new PET needs to be produced to compensate.
Even worse, "it's mildly annoying, so I don't wanna!" Ofc would be better if people didn't throw em away at all, But alas
I like the convenience of not losing the cap
Easier to walk around with an open bottle too since you don't have to hold the cap or put it into your pocket
I don't know what % of plastic the cap comprises in a plastic bottle but I bet its double digits. So annoying as it is to use, attaching the cap to the bottle does make sense for recycling. It also lessens litter.
But it needs to be paired up with a deposit refund scheme. Lots of countries do this already and encourages circular economies - the soft drinks companies purchasing recycle material to reuse. I bet those schemes measured a significant jump in recovered plastic when virtually all the caps come back with the bottles.
Annoying? Am I the only one who thinks it's more convenient? The cap cannot fall, you can open it one handed, you cannot lose the cap...
from what i can tell it's like half a percent of a percent of people who give a singular thought to it beyond "oh they changed it"
Thanks for explaining, I was worried this was a band aid mesure which didn't solve to root cause. /s
I was interested in that whole ecoli eating plastic and producing 95% acetaminophen from it by mass. Maybe we can stop a lot of the plastic from water/soda bottles and just medicate ourselves till our livers shit themselves out our assholes.
Attached cap prevents it from becoming a macroplastic
I love the smell of an amount of microplastics in my brainmatter that is equal to a plastic teaspoon in the morning. Smells like burnt toast.
Cynicism, on the other hand - that's always good.
Real ones get their micro plastics by chewing on used car tires.
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