I know they’re supposed to be good for the environment but… God I hate those caps.
As it has been pointed out by others, research data shows that plastic bottle caps are a significant part of trash that is washed onto beaches. In order to prevent that bottles now come with tethered caps. From this point of view this measurement might be understandable. But does one really lose the caps of these bottles that often? Is this really the problem?
Where I live these kind of bottles are part of a deposit system. When you return them at a supermarket you get your deposit (25 Cent) back. This alone ensures that these bottles barely end up anywhere in the enviroment in the first place. When these bottles are returned at the supermarket, all of the bottles do have their respective caps screwed on. This method is practical, as you can collect these bottles wtihout having to deal with leakages of excess liquids.
I never had any issues regarding that the cap is still attached to the bottle, which could be an issue when it comes to recycling these bottles. One major problem when it comes to recycling of plastics is that it is crucial that these plastics are separated by the material they are made of. That is why it is impossible to recycle compound materials, as they can’t be separated from each other (i.e. tetra pak, tetra bric). The most common way of getting rid of these kind of packings is to burn them and use their heat for generating electricity.
These plastic bottles on the other hand can be recycled easily, as they consist of only one material (PET) - given, that the label is made of the same kind of plastic like the bottle itself.
I don’t know if the bottle cap is made of the same material (PET) or if this is another kind of plastic (ABS, PS, …). Making these bottle caps from the same material as the bottle itself would impose a greater impact than tethering them onto the bottle.
At first glance this measurement sounds like a low-hanging-fruit-greenwashing-attempt that hurts nobody. Very similar to the ban of disposable plastic cutlery or the ban of plastic straws. Don’t get me wrong - I think that these things are an important step towards reducing pollution and garbage overall, but did you ever ask yourself: “How does the garbage get into the ocean in the first place?”
Those caps are a way to cull the weakest parts of society. I too have hurt my dick on them but have learned to deal with them.
I don’t get it.
It stays open, you can drink from it, you can pour from it, you can pour into it.
What action does the cap staying attached prevent, warranting its detachment?
It gets in the way of everything all the time
That said, i have seen good and bad examples of this.
No it doesn’t? I buy a bottle of something every day, these have never been trouble. Not once.
The first time I noticed it I thought, “neat” and that’s it.
How does it get in the way? You open it and it stays there. Out of the way of anything you might use a bottle for.
Are there different ones? Because I’ve only ever seen the one, and it’s the same one everyone hates on in pictures and videos online. Yet people say there are good ones and bad ones?
I don’t get it.
It seems other people have different experiences. I find the caps mildly annoying as they do seem to get in the way when pouring and refilling, and they are slightly more difficult to screw back on to the bottle.
Out of the way of anything you might use a bottle for.
Everything except drinking from it! The scratchy cap touching my face and the sugary drips falling on me detract from the whole experience.
Maybe your bottles are different, but the bottles here in Germany have a very short “leash” and are often connected to the right in two places, so it constantly pushes in your face when drinking.
If an actual problem would have been solved, I’d be fine with it, but it’s just a pointless law which only exists to create the illusion of progress and shift blame onto consumers.
Rotate the bottle 90 degrees so the cap goes to the side of your face rather than mashing it into your nose.
…then it scratches my cheek.
Why is it so hard to understand that a useless piece of plastic in your face might be unpopular?
I guess because I’ve got used to it now and it’s entirely a non-issue in my life, I wouldn’t say it scratches my cheek at all.
If it means less microplastic in the sea, I’m all for it
And even that is dubious.
How many of the caps are actually reaching the ocean and is that actually a way to reduce that?
I mean, how about a European refund system? Works perfectly fine in Germany and actually makes recycling a bit easier?
These caps are empty gestures as I described above.
Less plastics on your streets, in your yards, and fields, is also an important goal
Then introduce a refund system. Has been proven to work in Germany for over 20 years.
And as I wrote in another comment already: these regulations are a distraction so that the real problems can be ignored. They are actively harmful.
I can’t see how attaching them wouldn’t increase the rates at which they’re recycled.
You can believe this was never a problem perhaps, but then you’ve got to wonder why the change was made—no one is gonna profit from the design of bottle caps changing, so what’s the motive for the change if it’s not a problem? Contrary to the somewhat common belief, politicians tend to try and not waste time on useless legislation.
A refund system costs money, this change basically doesn’t.
It was implemented as a symbol. I described it above.
The entire idea, similar to the carbon footprint, are attempts by the fossil industry to shift responsibility away from them and towards consumers. We from BP and BASF would love to stop pollution, but you guys keep throwing away the bottle caps! So they lobby the European Parliament to enact such regulations, the Parliament can act like they actually did something and the industry can keep producing plastics.
Yes, other solutions would cost more money. But these solutions would have at least a realistic chance to change something.
Remember the straight cucumber regulation? That was demanded by the retail industry. So it’s not like the EU doesn’t enact regulations for some lobby groups.
And if you think these caps are doing anything, the fossil industry fooled you successfully.
If that’s the biggest annoyance in your life, I want your life!
It’s not, and it’s disingenuous to imply that this is what I wrote.
You’re building a straw man.
If you only have one annoyance big enough to complain about I want your life.
Removed by mod
Many of the new bottle caps I encounter will actively push back into the closed position, meaning I have to keep them out of the way when pouring if I don’t want to pour over the cap. Since I tend to encounter them on drink cartons rather than bottles, because I don’t drink soda etc, it becomes even more annoying. Bottles you can turn whichever way, but drink cartons need to be kept at a certain angle for optimal pouring. Quite often the cap is in the way and there isn’t really a nice place to put it.
This is even more frustrating because I never lost these caps anyway, I always threw them away with the packaging. I understand that it probably helps in the bigger picture, but for me personally it solves nothing and is incredibly annoying.
Wait, the Dutch Optimel brand doesn’t have attached caps. I think? Or I just mindlessly rip the caps off so they are loose? It doesn’t make any sense to have those be attached with an angle like that.
Funnily enough, I despise with every cell of my body the first cap. When opening the first time, it always create a mess by shooting liquid everywhere. And after that, it feels fo flimsy that it would break any second.
Hmmm yeah, now that you mention it I do remember a few occasions of launching soy milk throughout the kitchen. Still I prefer it over the second one though. After it’s been opened once, it’s much less in the way.
The cap pokes my face if I try to drink from it without tearing off the cap. When I tear it off there’s then a sharp edge that pokes my hand every time I open or seal it.
This is such a bizarre design. I wonder why they don’t just make a bit of a longer “leash” attaching the cap to the ring. Because then the cap wouldn’t detached but it also wouldn’t be annoyingly in the way like this.
Here in the US, I haven’t seen these bottles yet, but I wonder if we’ll be getting them at some point. :p
It’s attached by two “leashes” and if you yank it a bit the other rips off making it pretty much what you described but it’ll still tangle all over your face when you try to drink straight from the bottle and also now you have the sharp bit poking you every time you screw and unscrew the cap. This is not the only design we have. I just happen to shop at LIDL and their bottles are all like this. Some other designs are slightly better.
With the bottles I have seen so far you can just push the cap a bit further so it is at an 180 degree angle and out of the way when drinking from the bottle.
Yep exactly they latch in a wide open position.
At this point there might still be experimental versions around, stuff which companies made and want to use up, but sooner than later you’ll only see the good, successful versions on bottles. The rest is muscle memory and, if you don’t have the physical/mechanical intelligence to figure out a latching mechanism yourself, learning by observing other people successfully not stabbing their faces.
Valid, I’ve mostly been pouring soda into glasses, and at least with my face, that doesn’t happen.
The people complaining about that are mostly the same as the ones who complained that the masks were “suffocating” them during covid.
That’s not the case in Norway. We hate them equally. I hate it with a passion. Wore my mask dilligently without a fuss. Still do when I am sick and need to go to a shop.
I find it especially infuriating when driving a car. It is so hard getting it to seal properly one handed now.
Oh shut the fuck up, that’s not true at all. It can be annoying without it being some kind of nefarious political issue. What a cynical person you are.
On many bottles I’ve encountered the ring that keeps the cap attached to the bottleneck has been quite loose, so you rotate the cap up/left/right, thinking you’re good to pour, then as you get going the cap slips back down, ensuring you distribute whatever you were pouring all over the the table.
The ones on the soda bottles are attached so closely to the ring that it makes it hard to put the cap back on. Because they are attached on one side, you always put the cap on at an angle which prevents you from screwing it closed. You have to pull the cap up a bit while closing to ensure it goes on straight. It’s a minor annoyance but half of the time it takes multiple attempts to put the cap back on.
Everyone hates that.
I have kids and I don’t hate not losing caps.
Thanks for broadening my perspective.
I did too, but I’ve actually gotten used to it now
Tbh this, when you actually just leave it properly attached it’s not much different from a water bottle lid at that point
I hate this so much. I swear I have never in my life returned a bottle without the cap. How would you even lose it in the first place? What psycho opens a bottle and discards the cap? Now my pocket knife usage has increased 300% as I’m cutting this sharp plastic thinghy away every time and I’m creating way more plastic waste than ever before. I agree with a lot what the EU does but this is idiotic.
Very odd. Where I live you’re not supposed to return the bottles with the cap, they’re different plastics and the recyclers don’t want the caps. You’re supposed to throw the caps away in the regular trash.
What? So how do you get the little ring off that that rips off the cap when twisting it the first time? You just peel it off with a knife every time? You also need to peel the labels off then?
Which is weird, because most places can just sort the PET shreds from different plastic for decades now.
I leave the little ring on and nobody’s complained yet. I was just told to remove the caps one time, so I kept on throwing those out since then.
Nobody has complained because you don’t have to remove the caps.
As I said, someone did complain about the caps.
My town has stream recycling so we don’t even have to separate cardboard, plastic, and aluminum. I just chuck it all in the bin and let it be someone else’s problem.
I only buy one of those plastic bottles every two months, so that’s okay for me. The good water comes from the tap, cola or other drinks I buy in glass bottles.
It’s not just soda bottles here, it’s milk bottles, cream, fruit concentrates… Anything in any kind of plastic container with a screw-on cap.
Actually the soda bottles are the least egregious examples. The milk bottles are terrible: you’re 100% guaranteed to spill milk if you don’t detach the cap.
I hate so much the milk bottle caps. Now i have to open it inside a sink every time or send it flying all over the room.
In Germany milk usually is sold in a carton or a glass bottle. I can imagine it is annoying for you.
Let’s just stop making all this shit out of plastic. Like immediately
Let’s make them out of solid gold
I know they’re supposed to be
goodless damaging for the environment but… God I hate those caps.I don’t care. I don’t buy anything in those bottles, except milk every now and then.
Milk is the only thing I to not buy in plastic bottles.
It’s either that or cardboard bricks (only for long term storage milk). Glass is extremely rare nowadays.
Always cardboard boxes for me. Bought 0pastic for quite a while, but in the meantime AI get better quality milk in cardboard for less money than in plastic. And the glass bottles here are just stupid: expensive, single use with deposit. Neither good for the environment, nor for my time resources.
The cardboard milk here, being “UHT” (ultra high temperature) treated for a long shelf life doesn’t taste the same. For many preparations it doesn’t really matter, but for some it does.
This I would sign instantly! Here we have premium organic good for three days “Frischmilch/Vollmilch” milk in cardboard boxes too.
You can solve this easily by not buying overpriced massproduced factory food.
Wanna fight back? Stop giving them money.
Or just, putting the cap on the side and never have it be an annoyance whether you drink from the bottle, pour it in a glass, or whatever really. People complaining about that have issues.
If you have a limited mobility, they can be very hard to close if the tail is short, which defies the purpose of a bottle cap.
Yes, that is mildly infuriating. Someone deliberately going to additional trouble to increase the a kind of microplastics in the environment and make it harder for the poor folks in the recycling plants.
Get over yourself
I recycle everything so personally don’t have much need for the tether, but it’s probably better overall and I imagine most people will just get used to it, honestly.
It is a bit annoying having to make sure my nose doesn’t get bonked when I drink, though.
„Im so inconvenienced by the piece of trash i bought wanting to stay a single piece of trash”
Humans as they discovered they made a small continent out of trash in the ocean. If it bothers you so much then stop buying plastic trash.
„Im so inconvenienced by the piece of trash i bought wanting to stay a single piece of trash” // Humans as they discovered they made a small continent out of trash in the ocean. If it bothers you so much then stop buying plastic trash.
People are clearly complaining about how the feature was implemented. Not the goal (to keep it as a single piece of trash).
So?
So? (implied: “I dun unrurrstand u’re point”)
I’m highlighting that the other user is missing the bloody point of the complain.
People want less plastic waste, sure. And yes, less consumption is a way to achieve so - no shit Sherlock “riodoro” Holmes. However, in this specific case the design solution was done so poorly that it inconveniences the user by a lot, and it isn’t even reducing (first R) the amount of plastic being used, it’s just in the hopes that people actually recycle (third R) that small piece of junk there.
Is this clear now?
Humans as they discovered they made a small continent out of trash in the ocean.
It’s just an area of higher density particulate matter in the water.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch
Despite the common public perception of the patch existing as giant islands of floating garbage, its low density (4 particles per cubic metre (3.1/cu yd)) prevents detection by satellite imagery, or even by casual boaters or divers in the area. This is because the patch is a widely dispersed area consisting primarily of suspended “fingernail-sized or smaller”—often microscopic—particles in the upper water column known as microplastics.[4] Researchers from The Ocean Cleanup project claimed that the patch covers 1.6 million square kilometres (620,000 square miles)[5] consisting of 45,000–129,000 metric tons (50,000–142,000 short tons) of plastic as of 2018.
NOAA stated:
While “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” is a term often used by the media, it does not paint an accurate picture of the marine debris problem in the North Pacific Ocean. The name “Pacific Garbage Patch” has led many to believe that this area is a large and continuous patch of easily visible marine debris items such as bottles and other litter – akin to a literal island of trash that should be visible with satellite or aerial photographs. This is not the case.
— Ocean Facts, National Ocean Service[57]
