Yes I am aware that they’re somehow supposed to reduce plastic waste because the cap can’t get lost … unless you cut it off, of course.
Yes I am also aware that there are people with disabilities (shaky hands, weak grip, etc.) who are thankful for these and actually like the design. Good for them, and I mean that in a non-sarcastic way.
But personally, I hate these things with all the “first world problems” rage I can muster and go out of my way to rip / cut / twist them off on every single bottle I buy. I don’t like having the bottle cap directly in my face while drinking, or slipping in the way of the flow whenever I just want to pour milk, and on more than one occasion, I’ve actually cut my finger OR lip on these little sh*ts (not the same type as in the picture, but baldy-made longer “bands” that leave little plastic spikes on the cap and/or band).
No idea whether I should post this in the “unpopular opinion” section instead or if other people think the same, but to me, “mildly infuriating” describes them perfectly.
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is this why the far right is rising in Europe
Is this just EU or are others also joining?
I feel like I also encountered these in Japan, but my memory could deceive me.
Japan here. I’ve never seen them.
Ah okay, I must be remembering wrong.
I do however remember the separation of recyclables being fairly confusing for Westerners.
Japan is the last place I’d expect them. That country is atrocious when it comes to plastic garbage. Everything is wrapped in plastics, quite often multiple times. Even stuff that’s literally not needed to be wrapped. Or things that are just not needed in general, like, peeled fruit, packaged in plastic to stay fresh.
They are also remarkably light on littering, so it doesn’t make sense for them to use cap tethers for litter prevention either.
They are mostly there to prevent sea animals from swallowing the cap and dying a slow agonizing death…
I’m pretty sure the solution is to stop throwing plastic into the ocean.
I absolutely agree. Sadly alot of smaller nations get payed to dispose and recycle and then just throw the trash into the ocean. There are even areas that just have no trash disposal system in place other than the local rivers.
We don’t seem to have these in the US. When I was last travelling overseas it took me a while to realize why the caps had these. I don’t mind them.
You can rotate the bottle before taking a sip to position it such that the cap doesn’t hit your face. You can also pour liquid out of the bottle without having it run into the cap using the same rotation technique before pouring.
I just rip them off. It’s a straight up pointless thing designed solely to annoy people while providing no benefit whatsoever.
People who defend that kind of shit probably believe that plastic straws were going to be the downfall of humanity.
You can rotate the bottle before taking a sip to position it such that the cap doesn’t hit your face.
And gravity will make the cap spin around, hit your face, get in the way of the liquid, and make it splash everywhere but your mouth.
You can also pour liquid out of the bottle without having it run into the cap using the same rotation technique before pouring.
Same issue. As soon as you tip the bottle the cap will spin (apparently whatever genius designed this useless annoyance didn’t realise that bottle necks are cylindrical), get in the way of the liquid, and make it spill everywhere but the container you’re trying to pour it into.
They’re like a Pythagorean cup without the temperance lesson and well thought out design.
The only way to use these without wasting 99% of the liquid and making a mess is to either awkwardly try to hold them up as you pour, or to violently rip them out before pouring in an entirely justified fit of righteous rage.
What an utterly infuriating waste of plastic, time, and money.
Y’know how you hold the bottle with your hand to lift it? Believe it or not, you can hold it by the neck, and even slightly touching the little plastic ring the cap is tethered to will keep it from spinning.
Y’know that physics principle called the lever principle, or principle of moment…?
Thing is, if you grab a bottle by the neck and try to tilt it, you have to deal with the whole momentum / mass of the bottle, which is a significant amount of torque on your wrist, especially if you’re awkwardly trying to hold a cap that’s clearly not designed to be held this way at the same time.
If you instead violently rip the cap out in an entirely justified fit of righteous rage and grab the bottle by it’s center of mass, as normal people do and have done since bottles have existed (well, except for the cap bit; that shit is rather new), you can effortlessly spin it to whatever angle you want, with perfect control all the way.
Of course you can always hold it with two hands, which might be what you meant, but that’s a rather stupid waste of a free hand when most bottles are designed to be holdable with one single hand.
If you can’t hold a small plastic bottle by the neck, you’ve got bigger problems than tethered caps.
Does america have terrible bottle designs or something? Not one single bottle with tethered cap has ever freely spun, you can move it and it stays in that position
Luckily I’m not American, but I’ve never seen one of these contraptions that didn’t spin freely (and most of the ones I’ve seen spin freely and dangle all over the place, since the cap is tethered to the ring with a flexible strip of plastic).
It’s a weight attached to a ring placed around a cylinder, after all. It’s bound to spin freely, it’s inherent to the design.
The ones I am talking about don’t move under their own weight and gravity. If you held it with the cap upwards, it doesn’t rotate downwards unless you do it yourself
hence why getting hit in the face and struggling with a little cap is so puzzling to me
Apparently this very advanced technique is too complicated for some people.
Just like not throwing the cap at some helpless plant when going to the supermarket recycling the bottle
I had quite some beef with the tethered caps in the beginning when they didn’t latch properly, but have since gotten used to them. That said:
- Cap on top -> Funny hat for nose!
- Cap on bottom -> Beard gets to take a moist nap.
- Cap on sides -> Mustache also gets to take a sip!
Obviously not much of a problem. I’d need to clean my facial hair either way if eating ice cream or other messy foods, but cap rotation might not be effective if your “face” sticks out 1-2cm from your mouth.
One could also attempt to rotate the cap in a way to achieve quantum tunneling, but I don’t feel that I’ve achieved that level of “tethered cap proficiency” yet.
They’re also in Germany now, as mandated in every EU country, but I don’t have to deal with them because there’s also a heavy culture of reusable glass bottles (Mehrweg Flaschen) distributed in standard reusable crates. Everything has a deposit so you always bring them back when refilling.
I don’t mind them either but get yourself cheap cable pliers and cut the tether when you need to, or pour into a cup instead of drinking from the bottle.
what i think when people struggle with the cap hitting their face
Pretty much. Whenever I see these type of posts I can only think of some cavemen failing to figure out the most simple contraption. Those caps are literally not a problem at all, assuming you’re not a complete moron.
Its often the little things like this that make it clear for me who is indeed a moron.
Like oh, omg, that explains so much about that person.
That poor thing.Now, I def need to not equate that with ‘capabilities’ of someone, even morons can brute-force achieve things I could never. They do it despite the handicap and I respect that.
Dont want to discuss problems or brainstorm when them but respect nonetheless (them and their work).
Most of us are in fact not what it’s commonly considered neurotypical (I beehive they are a smol but just the most vocal group). And just like with folk on introverts/depressed/ADHD/autism/etc spectrum it’s best to recognise, acknowledge, respect, and adapt to that (ie work and communicate a bit differently with each one of us, it doesn’t take all that much, and the learning curve is just so unbelievably good at the start).
ooooh. It’s IN the computer.
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It doesn’t have to touch your face.
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bamboo or metal straws
Silicone. Silicone is the perfect straw material. Bamboo I guess works for disposable ones but I’ve never used one. Definitely too short for 1.5l bottles though.
Yes, this is exactly it.
Is we just invented bottle caps for the fist time ever these exact same peeps would complain about it.
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If everyone had either stopped buying bottled beverages or cleaned up after themselves, this wouldn’t be an issue.
Also, y’all sound a little whiny. This isn’t even a first world problem.
I haven’t bought a plastic bottle beverage in forever*. I just get metal cans or glass bottles. Or nothing.
*I bought a lot of PET bottled beverages in Japan but I was just visiting.
stopped buying bottled beverages
What’s the alternative in your opinion? I don’t think barrels and glasses are viable in every case. Serious question.
Dihydrogen monoxide
You’re coming up with a sarcastic exaggeration (barrels and glasses), followed by “serious question”. So which is it now?
Anyway. How about refillable cups, travel mugs, returnable bottles? Stop buying bottled water if your tap water is fine. Get a soda maker if you like sparkling water or Spritzer. Clean up after yourselves, return or throw away bottles with the lid on.
And first and foremost: stop buying packaged and bottled sh*t at every possible occasion. Things like single-use / to-go cups or bottles shouldn’t even exist.
We all created the landfills and ocean garbage patches and now we complain about our own stupidity, unable to drink from a bottle with a lid attached to it like we’re toddlers.
If you seriously ask me for an alternative: stop creating waste. Stop complaining about your waste. And stop complaining about regulations that try to limit waste that shouldn’t even be there. Big part of the problem stems from our own laziness and consumerism. Everyone is part of the problem, nobody wants to be a part of the solution. What did you even expect?
I hardly want to reply for your aggressiveness. I don’t see how that’s been called for.
But yes, I was being serious because you explicitly excluded all bottles by “bottled beverages”. So I thought, water can be replaced by tap water (I do that personally because I don’t want carry crates that are unnecessary) but what about beer, for example? I could order kegs (no sarcasm, they start at 5 liters) but can hardly take them with me.
So, by “bottled beverages” you don’t count “returnable bottles”. Apart from that differentiation not being obvious, it didn’t occur to me because in my country almost all sold bottles are returnable, even single-use ones.
Hope that clarifies my question. Maybe next time don’t immediately jump to conclusions and make assumptions about other people’s lifestyle.
Sorry, it’s aggravating to see people complain about bottle lids and not seeing what the bigger problem behind is.
We created this mess and now the least bad thing in this literal pile of garbage gets labelled ‘mildly infuriating’.
Your solution to people wanting to buy some specific drinks is “don’t buy the thing you want, buy something else”. Hardly an answer.
Why is it “hardly an answer”?
Getting everything you want at any time is part of the reason why the planet’s dying. Consumerism is not sustainable. Just one example: one wants a coffee and isn’t at home. Solution today: get a single-use plasticcy paper cup of coffee with an optional packaged portion of sweetener and / or cream, a plastic stirring thingy, and a plastic lid. All that goes to waste because people were led to believe that a “paper” cup is good for the environment. It isn’t.
You could get a reusable water bottle
it’s mildly infuriating to OP, and it’s something that’s mildly infuriating
It’s absolutely fine, it was mildly annoying the first two times and now in glad I don’t have to hold the cap while drinking.
I burn one (1) tire for every one (1) of these I have to deal with
Based.
Guess I’ve gotten used to them. At the beginning I’d just rip the cap off anyways, but now somehow managing though I do buy this sorta bottles rather rarely nowadays.
ANYWAYS I don’t understand why so many products come in plastic bottles, or carton box with a fucking plastic cap. Aluminum cans are great, cartons are great, glass bottles are great. Why plastic???
I’ve also just given in but I gotta say: what the heck is wrong with people that they can recycle the bottles but somehow throw the caps anywhere in nature? How long do you leave your brain in the microwave each day before that behaviour becomes normal? People suck.
The whole thing is about bottle caps found on beaches. I assume people just lose track of them, you might put it down on your beach towel and then something moves and a second later it’s in the sand getting buried.
Stop buying single use plastic and get a reusable!
#DeathToPlastic
There literally is no option for it. I can only buy my milk in cartons with this cap on
You can go to your local farmer. They usually don’t bother selling you some milk. Bring your own bottle for them to fill it up. Also, its usually much cheaper than everything you can buy elsewhere. If you want to be sure you don’t get sick you can cook the milk(but this causes a loss in taste), but you can also drink it without cooling it. You might get sick the first (few) times, but you will get used to it and won’t get sick from drinking raw milk.
“Just milk the cow your self”
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Plant milk, right?
Plant milk is pure sugar which is worse than cow milk that is half sugar. Better to just avoid consuming lots of it.
What are you talking about? Off the top of my head, unsweetened soy milk and unsweetened ripple (pea milk) have no or low sugar, and are high protein
Then look around, more milk suppliers are using reusable glass bottles now.
I have two alternative options in my immediate neighbourhood in a big city in capitalist-shithole-central and I didn’t even have to try looking.
Big city, nice. I live in a small town. Could drive 30km to somewhere else, which I’m sure will not offset any savings xD
Plastic is better for the environment than everything else.
The best is to drink tap water(assuming you live in a region where its safe to drink).
That’s fine in some places. However, a lot of the US has contaminated drinking water due to lead mines. They mines are long closed but lead is everywhere. I don’t have to worry but I know people who have had there entire yards replaced due to lead.
If people were responsible they wouldn’t be needed.
baldy-made
What’s folks’ lack of hair got to do with their bottle cap making skills?
I like to break off all but one leg so the cap rotates around and sits against the bottle.
