I know they’re supposed to be good for the environment but… God I hate those caps.
why did make this law about bottle caps? how is that supposed to help the environment?
The advertised benefit is that if you throw away the cap and bottle separately, you have 2 pieces of trash to clean up instead of 1. The actual benefit is that bottling companies can charge more for a more complex mold, but the same amount of materials. Lobbyiest lobbied and tada! In reality both pieces end up in the same landfill or in the same water current to garbage island. Now we have an antiquated law and an annoying policy to follow.
Source…?
#4 #3 pollutants list every year (p6) separate because the materials have different density and when damaged separate (p10). Feel free to do your own research Lemmy downvotes effort that they disagree with. https://www.bottlebill.org/images/PDF/Dutch study on caps_Doppenrapport_EN_2017_DEF_small.pdf
I’ve heard (so no certainty), that they analyzed plastic trash collected from beaches and found plastic bottle caps to be a significant part of it. So they thought it would be worth trying to solve that problem.
This is why I’m glad I live in the US
Edit: this was mostly a joke. I think some of you took this personally
I’m happy such a trivial thing is what’s keeping you there.
Yes because if you had tethered bottle caps that would be your biggest issue.
I can choose to have tethered bottle caps or untethered bottle caps. Can you say the same?
As show in OPs video, yes. But I usually avoid plastic bottles.
So can we. It’s easy to pull it off. Gotta remember to find solutions, not problems.
Is THAT your litmus for freedom?! In some states women can’t choose to have an abortion. And in all of the states people have to choose between going to the doctor or paying rent that month… But goddamnit, at least they don’t have to deal with those pesky tethered bottle caps!
This was not an an attempt to start a huge debate. I’m just glad I don’t have to deal with that here.
Its not that I think the US is better. For instance, I think we could use some privacy and consumer rights.
I’d rather deal with a poorly designed bottle cap than half the shit we have to deal with here in the US. There’s a reason you’re getting down voted. What you said is so narrow sighted that it’s not even funny.
We have MUCH larger issues we have to deal with than a stupid bottle cap. “Glad I don’t have to deal with that here” is showing a willingness to ignore everything else.
it’s easy… instead of kicking off the bottle cap, just shoot it off!
Man we don’t even have healthcare or widespread public transit. Abortion isn’t even legal everywhere anymore.
Our country is rapidly falling apart before our eyes. Just stop man.
i don’t have to choose to sacrifice my life to survive!
Yes
Even with my old ass body of a guy who barely exercises, I still have the strength to twist off the tiny retaining plastic bit.
On the other hand, I’m glad these are the issues we’re combatting against, instead of a corrupt bipartisan government.
People that can’t use their brain should not be our baseline for making stuff.
Man have I got bad news for you. Almost everything uses idiots as the baseline for making stuff. They’re so numerous. Probably because everyone’s an idiot about something.
I know. It’s still sad this is encouraged, but there is little incentive to move in the opposite direction. Better to have a lot of braindead customers I guess.
Turn the bottle 90 degrees?
Turning the cap’s hinge on a milk carton every time you open it is not really convenient (you can’t turn the carton, it’s not round as a bottle)
That photo panel is the bottle rotated 90 degrees.
It gets in the way anyway. And the amount of times I was pouring myself a drink and the cap snapped shut spilling shit everywhere is too damn high.
And when you try to screw it back on it just doesn’t fit properly.
But anyway instead of endlessly complaining about it I just twist it off because I am not a baby.
You must have issues my dude
Everybody has issues, what’s yours?
First world problems
Me still ripping those things completely off defeating thier purpose. Of course I try to drink can as much as possible. Except most stores refuse to stock anything but bottled it’s frustrating.
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?
I’m seriously asking. I don’t get it. What inconvenience?
On larger bottles when I pour into a glass the attached lid always swings round. And it’s awkward to hold it wwhile pouring.
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.
Edit: two examples
This one is fine, it snaps into a position that’s handy and out of the way:
This one is very annoying. It’ll stay in this position and requires constant force to keep out of this position. When opening or closing the packaging the attachment point also rotes, meaning it’s always in the wrong place:
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.
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.
it’s attached and no it doesn’t make any sense and it sucks
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 people complaining about that are mostly the same as the ones who complained that the masks were “suffocating” them during covid.
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.
How in the world did you make that assumption?
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The cap pokes my face if I try to drink from it without tearing it off. 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.
Valid, I’ve mostly been pouring soda into glasses, and at least with my face, that doesn’t happen.
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.
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.
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 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.
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 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.
Right… you talked to one person… has it possibly occurred to you that the one person could have been wrong?
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Damn that looks annoying af
If the manufacturers would not use the cheapest caps with the least amount of flimsiest material available for this application, they could even be usable…
I so despise that, I always cut it off and get agitated because always leaves some sharpness.
Problem: It’s a different kind of plastic from the bottle and isn’t recyclable. So it’s going to need to be cut off the bottle anyway. :(
https://www.rd.com/article/keep-caps-on-bottles-when-recycling/
https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/you-asked/can-plastic-caps-water-or-soda-bottles-be-recycled
This is not about US bottle caps
I seriously doubt bottlecaps are any different elsewhere.
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
Oh that’s supposed to stay attatched? Thought it was only to make sure that bottle was unopened. I always just rip it off.
It’s a new thing that they’re harder to rip off. Because of EU regulation.
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]
