Bottle Tops

Is it just me or does anyone else find these new plastic bottle / carton tops which don't detach fully very annoying????

Extremely,  I thought it was just me. I understand the reason but they are just annoying.

3 thoughts

1 when fully undone push beyond horizontal, the cap then clicks and stays open

2 pull harder it'll come off!!

3 more Greeniot nonsense!!!!

They’re not too bad to undo but a real pig of a job to put the caps back on. I take the scissors to them

Therby reverting them to the sensible ones we used to have!!

You’ve got it

Totally agree!  I try to rip them off. If I fail, I’ve found that the easiest way to re-screw them closed is to position them and then give them a good thump. They locate with a satisfying click and can then be screwed tight.
Progress? ……. I fear prosecution for being nasty to a PC bottle top.



Cymro

When I was a lad pop came in glass bottles that had a deposit included in price, incentive to recycle was deposit returned wether buying replacement or not, thought you had won lottery if you found a couple of bottles that could be spent in shop for sweets.

Milk came in glass bottles
Meat and veg were sold loose and wrapped in paper.
Crisps came in paper bags
Fish n chips was only fast food option and came in newspaper
Waste food was rare, most was recycled into future meals, anything at end of useful life was burned on coal fire. Veg peelings went on compost heap to enrich soil for veg dad grew.
To save money we used to scavenge on the beach at East Wemyss for sea coal..lumps of coal that came from slag heaps of the many pits between Methil and Kirkcaldy, got washed out to sea the back in in Wemyss beach

From what I remember the only things that went into the dustbin for disposal were tin cans ans ash from the fire.

Progress has destroyed the planet in our lifetime

I'm used to the bottle tops now, hardest bit is getting them screwed back on securely. They are infinitely better than the design of those used on 2lt bottles of water by some of our friends in Portugal. The tops just flip off to open and on to close, unfortunately not always when you want the bottle open (yes, i speak from experience  ).

I was about five years old and standing at the bus stop with my mother.

For whatever reason I decided to drop my litter.

A unforeseen hand of my mother descended so quickly and smacked me across the back of my head that I nearly landed on the floor next to my litter and with a loud and verbal explanation of how never again to drop litter, I picked up and put it in the litter bin all of two feet from where I was standing.

Now aged 68 I don't think that I have dropped another piece of litter.

Replacing the bottle top and screwing it fully down is a problem, I have had a few bottles of sparkling water go flat on me because the top hasn't been screwed down far enough. The problem seems to be two fold, 1) It is very easy to cross thread the cap with the retaining link in place and 2) When screwing it down it needs extra force to seal it above and beyond what you would expect.  

Another progressive bright idea 

One of the things that continues to surprise me is how neat and tidy people are around here. I do a lot of street rubbish collecting, and I would guess that around 90% of all of the plastic bottles that get chucked down on the side of the road have their tops neatly screwed back on!

As to the comment that it's "nonsense": I don't think it makes sense to deny that we are gradually filling the populated parts of the world up with discarded plastic, and that it is steadily spilling over into the non-populated parts. You only have to look at a few images of the North Atlantic Gyre (one of several around the world) to see that.

In the overall scheme of things it is unimportant - in a million years time it will be gone, and the Earth will probably still look much the same as it does now. But in our timescales it's steadily going to transform what's around us for the worse - in our lifetimes, none of it is going to biodegrade in any meaningful way. IIRC, detachable drinks can ring-pulls were only made for a few years (the mid 1970's?) and yet I still come across them in the ground, 50 years on...

Bilbo's post above took me back to the early 1950s. Does anyone else remember the 'pig bins' we had in the streets? We had 3 or 4 in our road spaced around. Everyone took their peelings and scraps to the bins and I was told it was collected and used to feed pigs. And we thought collecting food waste was a new idea!

Tinwheeler wrote:Bilbo's post above took me back to the early 1950s. Does anyone else remember the 'pig bins' we had in the streets? We had 3 or 4 in our road spaced around. Everyone took their peelings and scraps to the bins and I was told it was collected and used to feed pigs. And we thought collecting food waste was a new idea!

"Pig swill
edit
Pig swill, hog swill, or hogwash is kitchen refuse used to feed pigs.[2]

Historically, pig farmers arranged collection of swill, e.g. by means of swill bins. The grease was skimmed off the swill tanks and sold for further processing, while the remaining swill was processed into pig food.

During World War II, a collection of pig swill was a nationwide campaign in Great Britain.[3]

During the 2001 United Kingdom foot-and-mouth outbreak, it was thought that unprocessed pig swill was a key link in the chain of the infection, and it was banned in Great Britain. In 2003, the ban was expanded to the whole European Union.[4]

There is now significant research[5] and support from farmers[6] for a return to feeding swill to pigs, not only as a way to reduce pig feed costs, but also to reduce demands on agricultural land for pig feed. In the United States, 27 states, along with Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands, permit swill feeding, for which proper processing and a license is required. Swill feeding is prohibited in 23 states.[7]"

Taken from Wikipedia.

Thanks, Paul, for the info about the pig bins. I can remember toddling along with my mother when she took peelings to the bin.

I don't remember pig swill being collected at home but I do remember my aunty and uncle collecting it when I stayed with them.  They had a country inn and absolutely every bit of food waste went into a bowl in the kitchen which was emptied into a large metal milk urn that was collected regularly by a farmer.  It was pretty disgusting - sight and smell!

When I was at junior school, teachers often called on pupils to be 'milk monitor' or some such task.
I always longed to be asked but always seemed to be overlooked.
Then one day, me and a fellow were chosen...........
to carry out the buckets of swill to put into a large container outside ready for collection.

Regarding the bottle tops, we've been struggling with them for the last couple of months too.
Is this a new legal directive from on high, or is it a manufacturer idea?

They are coming under what I refer to as PPP (Pensioner-Proof Packaging).
I came up with that term many years ago when I was in hospital (probably in my thirties).
There were quite a few 'elderly gentlemen' who couldn't open their packets of biscuits or small pots of butter etc., so I always helped them out (packet monitor?  ).
Of course, now I'm in that same category, battling with these impenetrable products. 

NB

Like the PPP concept!

I am marginally older than you and perfectly capable but modern packaging is getting worse.
My current record worst is these packs of coin cell batteries..

These can be impenetrable and really, only a stanley knife or scalpel will get the wee b8ggers out.
I'm sure these are responsible for about 50% of A&E queues!

(And NO, most can't be pushed backwards through the card backing!)