I know they’re supposed to be good for the environment. But… Holy smokes they drive me up the wall. They really do!
I had no trouble adapting when aluminum can pull-tabs got replaced by push-tabs, because it was pretty much the same movement, and I could see the immediate advantage of not getting cut by a pull-tab.
But the tethered cap is fighting decades of muscle memory in me: I’m used to taking the cap off with one hand and keeping it there while taking a swig with the other. Now I unscrew the cap with one hand, but I still have to hold the cap so it’s out of the way. It feels like drinking in handcuffs each and every time…
So unlike the pull-tab, the tethered plastic bottle cap is one of those compulsory eco solutions that constantly make you feel ever-so-slightly more miserable all the time, and I hate that because ecology only works when it brings something of value both to people and to the environment.
Seems like that’s a very commonly known fact since it’s been repeated ad nauseum. What seems to be completely missed is that compared to plastic bottles is something like 95% less plastic (probably even less actually). Also the liner can be easily separated from the metal when it’s time to recycling the can while during the meltdown process.
Yeah I made the comment before seeing all those. Which is why I deleted it shortly after posting it. Is it still showing up?
It may or may not… Federation being the bitch that it can be. Also, doesn’t help I’m an admin of my instance, so things tend to still show up anyway because “moderation”.
Also the comment was in the email notification I get regardless.
But it looks deleted on my instance at this point. Still worth addressing the other points that I brought up. Reduction of plastic by 90+% is still a very very useful thing, especially when it doesn’t particularly… or at worse minimally… hinder recovery of the metal materials during recycling.
Edit: Just like veganism… mandating people to eat no meat doesn’t need to be the end result… If everyone just changed out a couple of meat meals a week with vegetarian options. Collectively we can make a MASSIVE difference.
But in this case cans being so common anyway… This is massively worse because that just means bottles are fucking useless from the get-go. My house buys cans whenever possible. (honestly we mostly drink just water anyway.)
Yeah I don’t disagree, cans would be better than bottles. I just wanted to point out that plastic is ubiquitous and shows up in a lot of places you don’t expect. It’s extremely difficult to completely eliminate it. I’m not arguing that progress toward that goal is pointless, just that the goalpost is a lot further away than you might expect.