Tethered Bottle Caps

Wolf Link 🐺@lemmy.world to Mildly Infuriating@lemmy.world – 121 points –

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.

148

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).

Yes, this is exactly it.

Is we just invented bottle caps for the fist time ever these exact same peeps would complain about it.

5 more...

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.

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.

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.

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.

it's mildly infuriating to OP, and it's something that's mildly infuriating

This is some very short sighted thinking.

Caps attached to the bottles is very important to the recycling industry, so they can be more cheaply and efficiently shipped to China and thrown into the sea.

Source on that? As far as I know China stopped importing plastic waste as they realized it was too expensive for the state as they are burdened with the externalities, i.e. cleanup.

I think a few years ago it was China. Now it will be anybody else who wants Western money and doesn't mind burning plastic. Malaysia and Turkey seem popular for the UK. Not sure where the US sends it. It sure as shit isn't recycled in any way that people would think of as recycling.

I've no idea why we make plastic bottled drinks when aluminium cans exist.

I don't understand why caps coming with bottles helps recycle them?

Small bits like caps can't get sorted for recycling for some reason, so they're just "waste" instead of recyclable

Fuck plastic bottles in general, back to glass.

This generalization is a problem. Assessing the whole life cycle, the carbon footprint of glass bottles is problematic and plastics is a viable alternative.

You have to consider the significantly higher weight of glass increasing carbon emissions from transportation.

While plastics bottles can only be reused about half as often as glass bottles, their production is far more energy-efficient (glass production is done at temps of 1400-1600 °C or 2500-3000 °F while plastics use temperatures from 160-300 °C or 320-600 °F) which also reduces carbon footprint in basically every country.

Of course recycling has to be taken seriously and properly organized to prevent plastics just ending up in nature. But we have to balance the micro-plastics problem against climate change. We need to solve both.

It used to be done a lot more before and some places still do it in Europe. You return the glass bottle intact, they reuse it as is. Only carbon spent is in transporting it.

Well, you also have to clean them which I assume also uses energy. And they need to be fulfilling "food-grade" cleaning requirements since you want to drink out of them, so that's probably more energy needed than a simple wash in soap.

This is done regardless of the source of the glass. IE fresh or reused glass gets the same cleaning treatment.

Yes (I actually live in Europe), but it cannot be reused indefinitely and needs to be recycled after about 50 uses (that's why I mentioned the whole life cycle of a bottle). Also, glass breaks.

It's done less and less because recycling plastic bottles is better.

You have to consider the significantly higher weight of glass increasing carbon emissions from transportation.

If the transportation was electrical renewable sourced this wouldn't be a factor.

their production is far more energy-efficient (glass production is done at temps of 1400-1600 °C or 2500-3000 °F while plastics use temperatures from 160-300 °C or 320-600 °F)

If manufacturing was electrical renewable sourced this wouldn't be a factor.

I don't want micro plastics in my nutsack. I don't care that it'll be a long time before we get there. We should start getting there now. I don't want to hear perfectionist fallacy arguments about why I should be happy to have plastics swimming around with my sperm.

I don't want to hear perfectionist fallacy arguments

You mean like the ones you gave if there was a 100% renewable power grid and transportation was 100% electrical glass would be carbon neutral?

Well, both aren't and we are a long way from either, so that argument stands. You may care about your nutsack, as do I about my own, but climate change is the more critical problem.

Glass bottles are much much worse for the environment.

3 more...

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.

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

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

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.

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

1 more...

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.

Plastic is better for the environment than everything else.

1 more...

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.

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.

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.

I honestly like them. Those that "stay open", of course... They just stay out of the way, never get lost, and works pretty nice.

At first I disliked them, but quickly found out they are actually... Very practical. Even not considering the "green" twist, why didn't we adopted them before?

As an idiot who couldn't remember where the fuck I put down the cap 5sec ago I really like them

I don't buy bottles any more because of it so I guess it's worked better than expected.

The bottle cap folds out of the way. If you have it "in your face", it sounds like a skill issue

They should make it so the cap doesn't come off at all, so you have to buy a glass bottle with a metal cap that are both recyclable and won't give you erectile disfunction.

If the cap doesn’t come off, we can stop worrying about spillage

I've scene water been titles that were made of the same materials as a soda can. The lid was even threaded so you could reseal it.

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.

Just repeating my comment from the same topic a while back.

So okay the bottle ones like this are fine

It is these fuckers I have an issue with

I swear if I ever see the person who designed the new milk cap I will make them choke on a fucking tetrapak.

How come? Does it close while you're pouring?

It makes you spill the milk everywhere when opening because you don't twist it but pull it upwards.

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.

Perhaps becuase you've only opened it half way, you need to lift it back over again and clip in under the rim.

this is not doable with all caps and even with those designed to do this it doesn't work sometimes :(

Maybe they make them better here in Denmark. Plus we have "Pant" where you pay more for the bottles but get money back when you return them so it's a "belt and braces" approach I guess!

Your pant is actually a deposit.
And we have it in Germany as well called "Pfand".

Last time I bought something in such a bottle it was atrocious and stabbed me.

True, true it is just a deposit, but it certainly helps. Compared to England where I lived until I was 38 there are far fewer bottles littering the streets here in Denmark, although a lot of that can be put down to general public attitude probably. Never had a bottle stab me! Sounds like a case of bad quality control.

Without the belt and braces, your pants fall down?

Normally one or the other is enough. Wearing both is 'more than needed" but does work as a safety net. :)

Oh wait.. PANT & pants.. So was being a bit slow! 😂

baldy-made

What's folks' lack of hair got to do with their bottle cap making skills?

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.

The place I lived before this would only recycle the bottle, not the cap… made this mildly infuriating as I had to do extra work every time I wanted to recycle them. Glad I can just toss the whole thing in the recycle bin now.

It doesn't work that way.

The bottle itself is usually made of PET which is very recyclable. The cap is made of polypropylene for its strength to prevent the bottle from leaking.

You cannot recycle PET and PP together - you need pure resin for production. So this captive closure actually hinders recycling.

Personally, I've never seen many caps lying around without their bottle and think the EU solved a non-existent issue.

That's what I thought, too. I'm sure it's a problem SOMEWHERE, but did we just get slapped with a global solution to a locally inexistent issue?

I've heard that there's a measurable effect, though, even in Europe, so I guess it's okay. The extent of that effect? Probably comparable to non-plastic straws. Meaning almost none, just political.

I'm not sure how they're doing it but in Germany all those PET bottles go into a centrally-managed recycling stream (because 25ct deposit) and I bet they have some technical norms around that kind of stuff. The bottles are all crushed to save space, incl. the caps, which at least in the case of the water bottle next to me is HDPE. Judging by the haptics the label is PET, a flimsy banderole glued (fused?) on at the seam.

Either they're doing it chemically by breaking up the PET and then fishing out the rest from the soup (is that possible?) or what would also work I guess is shredding and mechanical sorting -- the label is flimsy, the bottle always transparent, the cap never transparent. Such stuff.

Right, the previous place required them to be removed because they’re different plastics. I assume the new one just automatically cuts the top of the bottle off and discards it… probably because the people using the service couldn’t be counted on to follow directions anyway. In fact that was the reason they actually gave up on city wide recycling. Too many people trying to throw non-recyclable items in the bin (like whole ladders and baby seats and greasy pizza boxes and all sorts of stuff.) They had a line literally catch fire because someone threw a lithium ion battery in the bin.

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.

Normally/averagely abled people - how is any configuration of the cap an issue?

To even think about it takes more energy than any obvious solution (like holding the bonded cap whilst drinking or not ripping it off the seal ring in the non-bonded versions).

Is it just because we are old and any change is annoying af?

They are awesome!

The issue I had with them at first was that I thought you had to rip it off halfway, then it was annoying as hell, but if you just unscrew it and fold it open untill it locks open it works great!

To close you just have to pull it up slightly to get it over the opening and then srew it closed

Naww look at the little lid trying to flip that bottle over, so cute.

my dad is disabled. had a stroke, shaky hands & stuff forever. he fuken h8's these new caps. i personally don't care much, unless i'm drinking yoghurt out of a bottle.

I pick up street litter, and having picked up thousands of pounds, I have never felt that loose caps are a problem, let alone one that requires such a solution. The number of littered bottles, with or without a cap, is greater than the number of loose caps, and the amount of plastic in every bottle dwarfs the plastic in a cap. Fixing the cap to the bottle will do nothing to improve the recycling rate of plastic if entire bottles are already tossed anyway.

I consider the idea of cap tethers as adversarial memetic warfare thrust upon us for some unknown ulterior purpose, possibly to make us hate the very idea of environmental consciousness. Same as paper straws. I like plastic bag bans though.

As far as picking litter is concerned, I personally prefer finding bottles without a cap. At least those are empty, all liquid having evaporated after the bottle has spent several months in the bushes. The capped bottles are often half-full and are just nasty. (Who even pays for a bottle of drink and not drinks half of it anyway?)

The number of littered bottles, with or without a cap, is greater than the number of loose caps,

That smells like survivorship bias. Your dataset is skewed by loose caps being way harder to find due to being smaller. It stands to reason that all those bottles without a cap you find will have also had their cap littered in the vast majority of cases.

Yeah, I concede that small caps are more likely to be carried away by rainwater than whole bottles :D. What I meant was that for every loose cap on the ground there is a bottle lying around somewhere, and also there are bottles with caps on. No one is tossing their cap into the bushes and then taking the bottle to the recycling center.

I don't mind them on soda, but during yoghurt is a mess. I have a beard and after drinking one of those I 8/10 times have a milky beard

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.

From my fridge now

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.

Ah okay, I must be remembering wrong.

I do however remember the separation of recyclables being fairly confusing for Westerners.

This is one of the dumbest things I've seen. What even is the point? This is just so dumb. Maybe you could break off the cap?

If you are worried about environmental impact ts they could just make them out of aluminum. We already have aluminum cans. Adding more plastic to the bottle will just create more waste.

Im sitting here in Canada just learning these exist in the first place.

The things that annoy us are things we are not used to. There are hundreds of things in your life that are equally annoying but since they have always been that way you don't notice them. That's why babies are the way they are. Everything us new and annoying.

I had the same instinct to tear them off but I told myself to not be a toddler and just got used to it within a week.

I thought this is just a sort of "seal" to make sure your the first to open the bottle. I just rip them off.

This alongside paper straws.

Who thought paper and liquid was a good mix?

I like to break off all but one leg so the cap rotates around and sits against the bottle.

Seriously, in the end it boils down to this: "I hate these things with all the "first world problems" rage I can muster ".. Don't you guys have other problems in your life? There you are, raging against a bottle cap.

Like another poster said and showed with a picture before: the cap can be tucked in at the side and voilà! Drinking can be done as it used to be..

Do people not carry pocket knives anymore? This seems like a non problem to me. I can cut this off in a second or two.

Edit: to the downvoters: could you explain why my question is so bad.

Could you explain the relevance? I asked why people don't carry a tool for a problem they are bitching about. Phones have nothing to do with a tethered cap.

AFAIK, these tethered caps are mostly an EU thing (and at the very least are not widely used in my area of the US) and a lot of European countries are less knife-friendly than the US.

I think that's mostly UK and France. As in: I have an Opinel lying around here, perfectly legal to carry in any situation as long as it's not a protest or such, it's a French knife, lots of tradition behind it... and it's illegal in France.

Rules in Germany are quite simple: If the blade is longer than IIRC 14cm (palm of your hand), or it is a locking blade that's designed to be opened with one hand, you need a good reason to carry it. Like, walking on the street towards the forest with an axe over your shoulder is fine because you have a proper reason, into a mall, not so much. Butterflies and some other one-handed opening mechanisms popular with notorious people are outlawed. Fixed blades with certain features, say, guards or more than one edge, are rightly classed as bladed weapons which you generally need to keep at home. Everything else is a tool you can EDC, and the only thing you need to buy a sword is your ID to show that you're 18.

Lol my brother that does not sound simple

His formatting leaves a bit to be desired, but that basically boils down to

  1. Knives with certain features like a double edge, a handguard, butterfly knives and certain other one-handed opening mechanisms (I assume switchblades, maybe assisted openers, possibly gravity and flick knives) are weapons and can be owned but generally not carried

Otherwise...

  1. Knives (and I assume this applies to other bladed tools as well since he mentioned an axe)with a blade length of less than about 5.5 inches are ok to carry for no particular reason, as long as either the blade doesn't lock or it needs two hands to open it (from how he wrote it sounds to me like one or the other of those features is ok, but not both)

  2. You can carry a bigger knife if you have a good reason that you need one, like if you're going campings/hunting, or clearing brush with a machete (and from how he phrased it sounds like you could also carry a one-handed locking knife with a good reason)

  3. You get carded to prove you're an adult if you want to buy a sword (I assume knives as well)

Which is pretty straightforward, and actually similar to a lot of laws in the states (looser than some states I believe, and stricter than others)

You should remember that the gun death rate in the US is only three times lower than in Ukraine during an active war. US is a fucking war zone!

How did you get to guns when I asked about pocket knives?

Not really relevant to the comment you replied to and only tangentially related to some other comments in this thread. We're talking about knives and soda caps here.

less knife friendly

Most places are advanced enough to not require their citizens to carry weaponry.

needing to always be armed is a uniquely american problem

A lot of us don't think of our knives as weapons, they're tools.

It's rare that I don't carry a knife, and using it in self defense is the furthest thing from my mind every day when I put it in my pocket. I use it for things like opening packages, cutting string, sharpening pencils, use various other tools on the knife like screwdrivers, pliers, awls, I have a lot of outdoor hobbies like camping, hiking, fishing, and knives are kind of indispensable for those pursuits.

If I'm ever in a situation where I absolutely need to defend myself, and I don't really foresee that ever being necessary, I'm probably not even going to think of using my knife in self defense, I don't think of it as a weapon anymore than I think of my wallet being a weapon, it's just something that lives in my pocket that I frequently need to use.

And knives make a shitty weapon, if you're close enough to stab someone, you're close enough to get punched in the face, or for your assailant to wrestle it out of your hands and stab you with it. You'd be better swinging around pretty much any larger object within arms reach to create some space. They say about knife fights that the loser dies in the street, the winner dies in the ambulance.

The knives I tend to carry especially aren't good weapons, most need 2 hands to open, aren't really designed ergonomically as fighting knives, most are fairly small so I'd have to get really lucky to hit anything vital and would probably just piss them off more and not stop the attack quickly, some of them don't even have a pointy blade so not good for stabbing (I actually make it a point to choose less threatening looking knives for my EDC needs) some of them don't lock open so they'd just as like close on my fingers as cause any harm to my assailant, and some of them actually lock in the closed position so definitely not good for a weapon.

I'm not saying that everyone who carries a knife has the same mindset. Lots of people do carry them as weapons, those people are idiots. And not everyone puts the same thought into the knives they carry and just get something that looks cool whether or not it's functional for their needs.

I also don't carry anything for self defense regularly and don't own a gun (not opposed to gun ownership in general, but my thoughts on that are part whole 'nother debate,) in general if I feel like I need to be prepared to defend myself if I go somewhere, I just don't go there. There's a bit of privilege to that, since I live in a safe area and can make that call, not everyone is lucky enough to live somewhere they can feel safe. The only exception is the pepper spray I keep with my dogs leash, since my wife or I often end up walking her alone at night, and that's more of a precaution against loose dogs, coyotes, etc. than against people.

There's a lot to say about Americans' love of violence and weapons and the sort of mindset we have about self defense, and overall I tend to think that a lot of my country is absolutely insane when it comes to those matters. That said, I also think people who look at the little swiss army type knives, or Leatherman multitools I tend to carry and see a terrifying deadly weapon have their own issues to work out too.

Not American, and a pocket knife makes a terrible weapon. There are legitimate everyday uses for pocket knives. You watch too many movies.

How to say this in a non aggressive, non condescending way…

You're stupid.

The thing stay open and out of the way. If it's in your face when you drink from the bottle, it means you lack the ability to rotate a loose plastic ring 90° (or even the whole bottle). If it's in the way of your pour, same thing.

They are as unobtrusive as it gets; and you going out of your way (with rage, it seems) to do something tedious like forcibly ripping them off or cutting yourself on smooth plastic instead of looking at it and moving it, effortlessly, in any position that would not hinder you, is the paramount of silliness.

They are not confortable at all. Let me try to think how to call you too… mmm…