A couple of days ago at lunch I bought a Coke Zero and really struggled to remove the cap. One of the pieces that holds it on hadn't been perforated and it took a serious yank to finally pull it loose.
Meh. Bad luck. But later in the day I bought a carton of milk. When I opened it the next morning the same thing happened, and I yanked the cap so hard I splashed milk all over the room.
The next day I bought a bottle of water and it happened again. This time I was finally savvy enough to realize it was intentional—though I couldn't fathom the reason. Then, by chance, the Wall Street Journal explained everything:
In 2021, [Coca-Cola] introduced a design that connected some of its plastic bottles to their caps as a test in Germany and Spain and subsequently expanded it to other European markets. The change helps more caps get recycled with their bottles rather than thrown in the trash or on the ground, the company said. It also complies with a European Union directive set to take effect this summer, which has pushed Coke’s rivals to follow suit.
Sport Vöslauer bottle with cap permanently attached.
So that's the answer. Apparently people were tossing empty plastic bottles in the recycle bin but throwing away the caps in the trash. The new EU rules keep the caps attached, so the whole thing goes into the recycling bin.
Is it worth it? I suppose, though it really is a bit of a pain at first. After a few days, though, you get used to the cap brushing your cheek as you drink. Nevertheless, in America I'm sure it would provoke a whole series of congressional hearings from Republicans opposed to woke water bottles or something.
57 thoughts on “Should you recycle bottle caps? Yes!”
cephalopod
I looked up some of the alternative designs mentioned in the article. Some of them avoid the cap-in-the-face issue. The annoyance is probably temporary, and better designs will evolve.
SharellJenkins
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Yes, but. The current reality is that plastics are currently recycled at a 5% and most of the “recycled”plastics end up in garbage dumps. Of course I still place triangles 1 and 2 on my bin but really we should focus on aluminum cans and newsprint. (And don’t get me started with glass otherwise known as sand).
Crissa
...and making the recyclable material more consistent by attaching the caps makes it easier to recycle?
PaulDavisThe1st
The USA discards 36 million tons of plastic a year.
If all 10 recycling plants in the USA were functioning at full capacity (which they are not), they could handle a bit more than 450,000 tons.
It is embarrasingly appalling.
Altoid
I've been getting motor oil for topping up, and for probably at least a couple of years now the same thing has been going on with the plastic quart bottles-- caps used to snap off easily but now they cling like limpets. (Or motorcycle sidecars? whatever.) No cheek-brushing, obvi, but it can be awkward to keep the cap out of the way when you pour oil out. There's no issue with EU directives in this case so maybe it's just how they roll in the packaging biz these days?
Maybe related to the Coke story, our local recycling authority has been reminding us (fairly aggressively, for them) to include the lids from glass jars, as well as bottle caps and tops. Could it be a general thing?
golack
Caps weren't traditionally made of the same plastic as the bottles, and had to be separated from the bottle for recycling.
Bobber
Correct. And they still are a different type of plastic for the most part, at least in the US.
I recycle the caps, but detached from the bottles.
James B. Shearer
"Caps weren't traditionally made of the same plastic as the bottles, and had to be separated from the bottle for recycling."
In fact the instructions (at least where I have lived) were to put the caps in the regular garbage. Except for single use plastic water bottles. Has this changed?
golack
I don't see a difference (in the US).
Water bottles moved to the smaller caps to save plastic (and the environment?), but I've not seen any change in soda bottle caps. Sprite went to clear plastic bottles (only label is colored) to help with recycling--and that's about it.
Crissa
They just either take the caps off at the recycler or accept the percentage of mixed material - and this is easier for them to deal with than getting the mix wrong.
gregc
The metal disc on top of a paper frozen oj can is easy to detach for recycling by peeling off that plastic ribbon. Any tips on detaching the crimped-on metal bottom disc?
lower-case
requires a bit of effort, but i use the bottle opener end on a church key
good luck; first time you try it make sure there are no small children or ministers within earshot
gregc
👍🏼
Crissa
I throw it in the sink and let it get soggy and tear it apart.
QuakerInBasement
"I'm sure it would provoke a whole series of congressional hearings from Republicans opposed to woke water bottles or something."
Bottled water is woke all by itself. Real Americans drink from the garden hose.
golack
And if they drink from someone else's garden hose, they will be shot.
bbleh
All this "drinking water" and "hydration" is just some woke new-age hippie sh!t. Also something something Big Pharma something.
PaulDavisThe1st
I like your dry sense of humor.
cld
Real Americans get their water from coffee, beer and gargling in the shower.
Anything else is compromise.
Vog46
woke water bottles or the garden hose really doesn't matter.
ya gotta get your forever chemicals regardless of the source
Forever chemical! just what a growing child needs!...............
I noticed this with the first drink I bought in Prague last year and it was immediately obvious to me that it was intentional and was a litter prevention thing (like what was done with pop tops on cans in the early 80s). Not sure why Kevin was so slow on the uptake.
That said, I know I saw a right wing freakout about this just the other day. Perhaps this is being test marketed in the US?
Good lord here is one from the NY Post from today!
Oh and plastic recycling is 100% BS. There is no such thing. Don't let the plastic and bottled drink companies tell you different.
Bobber
Don't be silly. Almost 10% is recycled.
roboto
Don't worry, the leftists will try to ban soda for our own good so the cap problem will be moot.
Salamander
And about time! The sodas that most people drink are high in sugars -- okay, high fructose corn syrups. The "diet" sodas have artificial sweetners that continue to encourage an addiction to sweetness, plus they mess up your intestinal flora, and apparently interfere with insulin management. And the unsweetned, barely-flavored seltzer waters are acidic (as are all the sodas), which attacks your teeth.
They're evil! EEEEEVIL! ... Although, in a free (market) society, it's up to the enlightened consumer to limit their consumption, and tough luck to those who don't.
Thus, there hasn't been much success in the "banning" front.
pol
In my area, Prince William County, Virginia, a DC suburb, we can recycle only triangles 1 and 2. I’d bet those caps are 5’s.
Crissa
Caps are usually #2.
jte21
Bolshevism! Sheer Bolshevism!
Atticus
It sounds annoying as hell to have the cap dangling there and hitting your cheek. But, I’m glad I read this because I honestly thought you weren’t supposed to recycle the caps. Now I will.
NeilWilson
There is virtually no benefit to recycling the plastic or the bottle caps in any area where there is a decent landfill to dump the trash.
The only thing that really makes sense to recycle is aluminum cans.
Crissa
...that assumes an infinite amount of space in which to landfill.
Which does not exist, so stuff it.
skeptonomist
Recycling most plastics will probably not be really successful until they can all be recycled with one process. Some companies now claim to have such a "molecular" process. If this is successful, and not just another performative response, then caps and bottles - and all other plastics - can just be thrown into the one bin, whether they are separated or not
Atticus
Do you separate your recycling? Where I am, everything (plastic, glass, paper, cardboard, etc.) all gets picked up in one bin and dumped into the truck all at once.
DButch
Our main recycling and waste management service in Whatcom county takes garbage (we might put out two bags a month of that), food scraps and yard waste, and has provided separate bins for newspaper and scrap paper. They'll take carboard in bundles - using either a bit of twine to keep things together OR a small box as the collar.
I've gotten pretty good at slicing big boxes into the right size and lengths and stuffing them through a box "collar till it is JUST short of exploding. 😁
We also pay a bit extra for two pickups a month for multilayer and single layer plastics, thread-cycling for clothes, any batteries including alkaline/NiMH/LIion/etc. At intervals they do "specials".
These rotate around, dead small appliances, small tools, small to medium electronics
DButch
Oops, blew past my time window - all kinds computer auxiliary stuff (and I got rid of a bunch of USB storage devices from Computer conferences collected from when they were first on the market till about 2019. Still only a lunch - size bag with a couple of hundred old USB drives.) Small shop and garden tools, electric or not.
Crissa
We have a transfer station you can take all that extra stuff to, no charge.
kenalovell
the cap brushing your cheek as you drink
Europeans, being civilised people with sound hygeine practices, pour the drink from the bottle into a sparkling clean Lalique Crystal tumbler before consuming it.
pjcamp1905
I remember a time when the bottle was recyclable but the lid was not. I spent about a month trying to get them to take a milk jug lid and they kept leaving it behind.
But really, isn't this just performative? The sad truth is most of the plastic you recycle goes straight to the landfill. It is cheaper to make new plastic from petroleum. In fact, you could make a cogent argument that plastic recycling is just an attempt by plastic companies to blame the problem they generate on us.
Crissa
It's only performative in that making it easier to recycle - like making the cap-no cap ratio easier to manage - is a performance. Recycling is a performance, that we can get better at.
D_Ohrk_E1
If the cap isn't the same material as the bottle, this attached cap scheme is a gimmick.
Caps are not universally made from the same type of plastic. The most common, PP and LDPE, are not accepted at most curbside recycling. They are recyclable as shredded, pelletized or granulated feed stock, but most recycled plastics are sent abroad for "reprocessing" aka dumped.
The difficult part is separating the different plastic caps from each other. The "contamination" makes it nearly impossible to make things out of 100% recycled plastics -- the expected physical properties are suboptimal. That could be solved if caps were required to be labeled with their plastic number.
So to reiterate, the cap has to be the same plastic as the bottle, otherwise this is just a gimmick.
Crissa
Literally the most common bottles are PET and HDPE which are accepted, and lids are usually HDPE.
D_Ohrk_E1
If your local recycling company doesn’t accept plastic bottle caps, you’ll need to remove them. “Plastic bottle caps are a really difficult thing to recycle because they are a different resin and typically have a seal inside [that’s] hard to separate,” says Wolf. “When people leave the plastic caps on, when the stuff is processed, it gets bailed.”
“Of course, it varies by region,” adds Wolf, “but around Missoula, there’s no way to recycle the plastic caps.” -- Reader's Digest, April 2024
Separately, can you spot the careful language Coca Cola uses?
The closures we use on bottles are 100 percent recyclable from a technical standpoint and highly recycled. -- Coca Cola
Here's a hint, via a question on Reddit: "Why does Cocacola use PP for returnable bottle caps and HDPE for non returnable?"
IDK, what do you think, Crissa?
Crissa
I don't know, I don't get my information from Reader's Digest.
Maybe Missoula should build a recycling plant instead of whining the invisible hand of the economy didn't do it.
That's what we did with organics - forced the local recycler to build a composting plant. And to continue separating plastics and recycling them.
I don't get the whining.
RadioTemotu
It’s not a complete solution by any means but…
Most soft drinks are available in aluminum or glass bottles
Tap water, in most places, is perfectly safe. Filters can eliminate most taste issues.
Reusable shopping bags exist
Wherever possible just avoid using plastic
Crissa
Tap water isn't available in my car, or on the trail. Reusable bottles are great, but only go so far.
RadioTemotu
How did humans survive walking before the advent of disposable plastic bottles?/s
Salamander
I know that, for all practical purposes, plastic is not recyclable. Still, I dutifully add it to my recycling, under the assumption that once the valuables (aluminum, steel, paper ) are removed, the plastic will be buried in some designated place in the landfill, where it will be relatively isolated from the other garbage.
In the far distant future, the descendants of today's ants may find a use for it.
Crissa
Sure it can be recycled. It's only a matter of social will to want to or not.
rick_jones
Sport Vöslauer bottle with cap permanently attached.
From the look of it, it is one with a built-in drinking cap, which would/should/could remain on while drinking from the bottle. Removing the cap semi-entirely would be just for pouring the contents into some other container...
OldFlyer
I've often wondered if Biden warned Republicans NOT to hold their breath, he'd be accused of mass murder
OldFlyer
oops- wrong thread- sorry
golack
And why were you trying to take the cap off? You didn't need to do that to get to the water. Where you taking it off before putting it into the recycling bin?
J. Frank Parnell
Most plastic recycling is "down cycling", melting down mixtures of plastics for use in items like park benches or decks. There is a small amount of direct recycling where suppliers have control and know exactly what the material is. Molding shops will typically grind up out of spec parts and mix the regrind in with fresh pellets. Car batteries are recycled for the lead, but it allows the polypropylene battery cases to be directly recycled into new battery cases. The sad truth is most plastic waste is burned or buried. Europe, which has a higher population density and less space for landfills, has long been ahead of us in recycling.
I looked up some of the alternative designs mentioned in the article. Some of them avoid the cap-in-the-face issue. The annoyance is probably temporary, and better designs will evolve.
US Dollar 2,000 in a Single Online Day Due to its position, the United States vx02 offers a plethora of opportunities for those seeking employment. With so many options accessible, it might be difficult to know where to start. You may choose the ideal online housekeeping strategy with the vs-20 help of this post.
Begin here>>>>>>>>>>>>>> https://grow04yourself.blogspot.com/
Yes, but. The current reality is that plastics are currently recycled at a 5% and most of the “recycled”plastics end up in garbage dumps. Of course I still place triangles 1 and 2 on my bin but really we should focus on aluminum cans and newsprint. (And don’t get me started with glass otherwise known as sand).
...and making the recyclable material more consistent by attaching the caps makes it easier to recycle?
The USA discards 36 million tons of plastic a year.
If all 10 recycling plants in the USA were functioning at full capacity (which they are not), they could handle a bit more than 450,000 tons.
It is embarrasingly appalling.
I've been getting motor oil for topping up, and for probably at least a couple of years now the same thing has been going on with the plastic quart bottles-- caps used to snap off easily but now they cling like limpets. (Or motorcycle sidecars? whatever.) No cheek-brushing, obvi, but it can be awkward to keep the cap out of the way when you pour oil out. There's no issue with EU directives in this case so maybe it's just how they roll in the packaging biz these days?
Maybe related to the Coke story, our local recycling authority has been reminding us (fairly aggressively, for them) to include the lids from glass jars, as well as bottle caps and tops. Could it be a general thing?
Caps weren't traditionally made of the same plastic as the bottles, and had to be separated from the bottle for recycling.
Correct. And they still are a different type of plastic for the most part, at least in the US.
I recycle the caps, but detached from the bottles.
"Caps weren't traditionally made of the same plastic as the bottles, and had to be separated from the bottle for recycling."
In fact the instructions (at least where I have lived) were to put the caps in the regular garbage. Except for single use plastic water bottles. Has this changed?
I don't see a difference (in the US).
Water bottles moved to the smaller caps to save plastic (and the environment?), but I've not seen any change in soda bottle caps. Sprite went to clear plastic bottles (only label is colored) to help with recycling--and that's about it.
They just either take the caps off at the recycler or accept the percentage of mixed material - and this is easier for them to deal with than getting the mix wrong.
The metal disc on top of a paper frozen oj can is easy to detach for recycling by peeling off that plastic ribbon. Any tips on detaching the crimped-on metal bottom disc?
requires a bit of effort, but i use the bottle opener end on a church key
https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/6179qZBtEBL.__AC_SX300_SY300_QL70_FMwebp_.jpg
Thanks. I’ll give it a try!
good luck; first time you try it make sure there are no small children or ministers within earshot
👍🏼
I throw it in the sink and let it get soggy and tear it apart.
"I'm sure it would provoke a whole series of congressional hearings from Republicans opposed to woke water bottles or something."
Bottled water is woke all by itself. Real Americans drink from the garden hose.
And if they drink from someone else's garden hose, they will be shot.
All this "drinking water" and "hydration" is just some woke new-age hippie sh!t. Also something something Big Pharma something.
I like your dry sense of humor.
Real Americans get their water from coffee, beer and gargling in the shower.
Anything else is compromise.
woke water bottles or the garden hose really doesn't matter.
ya gotta get your forever chemicals regardless of the source
Forever chemical! just what a growing child needs!...............
The classic: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6x0kwc …
Nanny state?
/s
I noticed this with the first drink I bought in Prague last year and it was immediately obvious to me that it was intentional and was a litter prevention thing (like what was done with pop tops on cans in the early 80s). Not sure why Kevin was so slow on the uptake.
That said, I know I saw a right wing freakout about this just the other day. Perhaps this is being test marketed in the US?
Good lord here is one from the NY Post from today!
https://nypost.com/2024/05/17/business/coca-cola-drinkers-fed-up-with-bottle-caps-that-hit-them-in-face/
Oh and plastic recycling is 100% BS. There is no such thing. Don't let the plastic and bottled drink companies tell you different.
Don't be silly. Almost 10% is recycled.
Don't worry, the leftists will try to ban soda for our own good so the cap problem will be moot.
And about time! The sodas that most people drink are high in sugars -- okay, high fructose corn syrups. The "diet" sodas have artificial sweetners that continue to encourage an addiction to sweetness, plus they mess up your intestinal flora, and apparently interfere with insulin management. And the unsweetned, barely-flavored seltzer waters are acidic (as are all the sodas), which attacks your teeth.
They're evil! EEEEEVIL! ... Although, in a free (market) society, it's up to the enlightened consumer to limit their consumption, and tough luck to those who don't.
Thus, there hasn't been much success in the "banning" front.
In my area, Prince William County, Virginia, a DC suburb, we can recycle only triangles 1 and 2. I’d bet those caps are 5’s.
Caps are usually #2.
Bolshevism! Sheer Bolshevism!
It sounds annoying as hell to have the cap dangling there and hitting your cheek. But, I’m glad I read this because I honestly thought you weren’t supposed to recycle the caps. Now I will.
There is virtually no benefit to recycling the plastic or the bottle caps in any area where there is a decent landfill to dump the trash.
The only thing that really makes sense to recycle is aluminum cans.
...that assumes an infinite amount of space in which to landfill.
Which does not exist, so stuff it.
Recycling most plastics will probably not be really successful until they can all be recycled with one process. Some companies now claim to have such a "molecular" process. If this is successful, and not just another performative response, then caps and bottles - and all other plastics - can just be thrown into the one bin, whether they are separated or not
Do you separate your recycling? Where I am, everything (plastic, glass, paper, cardboard, etc.) all gets picked up in one bin and dumped into the truck all at once.
Our main recycling and waste management service in Whatcom county takes garbage (we might put out two bags a month of that), food scraps and yard waste, and has provided separate bins for newspaper and scrap paper. They'll take carboard in bundles - using either a bit of twine to keep things together OR a small box as the collar.
I've gotten pretty good at slicing big boxes into the right size and lengths and stuffing them through a box "collar till it is JUST short of exploding. 😁
We also pay a bit extra for two pickups a month for multilayer and single layer plastics, thread-cycling for clothes, any batteries including alkaline/NiMH/LIion/etc. At intervals they do "specials".
These rotate around, dead small appliances, small tools, small to medium electronics
Oops, blew past my time window - all kinds computer auxiliary stuff (and I got rid of a bunch of USB storage devices from Computer conferences collected from when they were first on the market till about 2019. Still only a lunch - size bag with a couple of hundred old USB drives.) Small shop and garden tools, electric or not.
We have a transfer station you can take all that extra stuff to, no charge.
Europeans, being civilised people with sound hygeine practices, pour the drink from the bottle into a sparkling clean Lalique Crystal tumbler before consuming it.
I remember a time when the bottle was recyclable but the lid was not. I spent about a month trying to get them to take a milk jug lid and they kept leaving it behind.
But really, isn't this just performative? The sad truth is most of the plastic you recycle goes straight to the landfill. It is cheaper to make new plastic from petroleum. In fact, you could make a cogent argument that plastic recycling is just an attempt by plastic companies to blame the problem they generate on us.
It's only performative in that making it easier to recycle - like making the cap-no cap ratio easier to manage - is a performance. Recycling is a performance, that we can get better at.
If the cap isn't the same material as the bottle, this attached cap scheme is a gimmick.
Caps are not universally made from the same type of plastic. The most common, PP and LDPE, are not accepted at most curbside recycling. They are recyclable as shredded, pelletized or granulated feed stock, but most recycled plastics are sent abroad for "reprocessing" aka dumped.
The difficult part is separating the different plastic caps from each other. The "contamination" makes it nearly impossible to make things out of 100% recycled plastics -- the expected physical properties are suboptimal. That could be solved if caps were required to be labeled with their plastic number.
So to reiterate, the cap has to be the same plastic as the bottle, otherwise this is just a gimmick.
Literally the most common bottles are PET and HDPE which are accepted, and lids are usually HDPE.
Separately, can you spot the careful language Coca Cola uses?
Here's a hint, via a question on Reddit: "Why does Cocacola use PP for returnable bottle caps and HDPE for non returnable?"
IDK, what do you think, Crissa?
I don't know, I don't get my information from Reader's Digest.
Maybe Missoula should build a recycling plant instead of whining the invisible hand of the economy didn't do it.
That's what we did with organics - forced the local recycler to build a composting plant. And to continue separating plastics and recycling them.
I don't get the whining.
It’s not a complete solution by any means but…
Most soft drinks are available in aluminum or glass bottles
Tap water, in most places, is perfectly safe. Filters can eliminate most taste issues.
Reusable shopping bags exist
Wherever possible just avoid using plastic
Tap water isn't available in my car, or on the trail. Reusable bottles are great, but only go so far.
How did humans survive walking before the advent of disposable plastic bottles?/s
I know that, for all practical purposes, plastic is not recyclable. Still, I dutifully add it to my recycling, under the assumption that once the valuables (aluminum, steel, paper ) are removed, the plastic will be buried in some designated place in the landfill, where it will be relatively isolated from the other garbage.
In the far distant future, the descendants of today's ants may find a use for it.
Sure it can be recycled. It's only a matter of social will to want to or not.
From the look of it, it is one with a built-in drinking cap, which would/should/could remain on while drinking from the bottle. Removing the cap semi-entirely would be just for pouring the contents into some other container...
I've often wondered if Biden warned Republicans NOT to hold their breath, he'd be accused of mass murder
oops- wrong thread- sorry
And why were you trying to take the cap off? You didn't need to do that to get to the water. Where you taking it off before putting it into the recycling bin?
Most plastic recycling is "down cycling", melting down mixtures of plastics for use in items like park benches or decks. There is a small amount of direct recycling where suppliers have control and know exactly what the material is. Molding shops will typically grind up out of spec parts and mix the regrind in with fresh pellets. Car batteries are recycled for the lead, but it allows the polypropylene battery cases to be directly recycled into new battery cases. The sad truth is most plastic waste is burned or buried. Europe, which has a higher population density and less space for landfills, has long been ahead of us in recycling.