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Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

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Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#91
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plastic bottles weigh less and can be made thinner. Transportation costs dominate the cost of most consumables

Transport cost is one factor, but even in countries where glass bottles are sold alongside plastic ones they are unpopular to the end user themselves because of their inconvenience. The common 2kg×6 PET bottles format is too heavy for glass bottles, so you end up paying more for heavier 1.5kgx6 bottles that are going to last you less.

Ketchup should be in a jar rather than bottle really. You can't get the ketchup out of glass bottles. Or atleast 5yo me couldn't. And that was about the last time I had those.

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What a mess. Nothing compared to https://www.google.com/search?q=landfill+plastic&tbm=isch

Plastic trash is supposed to be burned or recycled

We don't live in a world where what's supposed to happen is what actually happens.

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When my parents were kids in Asia they used to get all their club soda delivered in cartons in glass bottles that had a little glass ball in it to hold in the carbonation. You then pushed the glass ball down to open it up. They would then sterilize and reuse those and the glass ball would self seal once carbonated again. What a really nice, fully reusable bottle with no waste at all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cod…

the seal is waste depending what it is made of. ramune uses some kind of plasticy stuff, for example

Ah interesting. I though it was glass on glass.

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#94
post #4

Very nice. I live alone and often I'm baffled by the sheer amount of garbage that my urban lifestyle generates. I was not alive in the 80's but I was told that people used to use more environment-friendly packaging like glass bottles. Sometimes I wonder why this massive change to everything-should-be-packed-in-plastic happened.

> I wonder why this massive change to everything-should-be-packed-in-plastic happened I don't get why people keep pretending plastic being widely used today is due to some conspiracy instead of it's just better at its main function, even without factoring in cost. Compared to glass container, plastic ones are much lighter, harder to break, flexible, malleable, .. the list goes on. In the 1980s, the use of glass conta…

> Compared to glass container, plastic ones are much lighter, harder to break, flexible, malleable, .. the list goes on.

Yes but they also have the huge waste issue and society isn't doing enough to deal with it. The drawbacks are also huge, the cost just isn't an issue for the companies putting the plastic out into the world. It's more cost effective because we allow it to be, because we subsidise the oil industry, because we don't tax plastic waste highly enough etc etc.

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#95
post #8
post #4

Very nice. I live alone and often I'm baffled by the sheer amount of garbage that my urban lifestyle generates. I was not alive in the 80's but I was told that people used to use more environment-friendly packaging like glass bottles. Sometimes I wonder why this massive change to everything-should-be-packed-in-plastic happened.

In the 80s in the UK we had milk delivered every morning in glass bottles by a huge fleet of electric vehicles. The empty bottles were left out, collected by the milkman, sterilised and reused. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk_float

Dom't forget Ireland (according to Father Ted) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSstu2tzrng

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recyclable is a scam perpetuated by the plastic industry. You should be using reusable glass which is expensive to replace but cheap to refill.

> a scam perpetuated by the plastic industry What does this actually mean and what are you basing it on? Without any sources or references it reads a bit like FUD.

There have been a few articles about that recently. However, you can notice it for yourself if you notice how many products claim to be "recyclable" but how few are recycled.

If recycling were widespread, you'd expect the vast majority of products to be made with recycled plastic.

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What a mess. Nothing compared to https://www.google.com/search?q=landfill+plastic&tbm=isch

Plastic trash is supposed to be burned or recycled

Recycling of plastic is only even possible for a really low percentage of the total produced, it's not a fungible thing since there are seven different grades and each one is incompatible with the other in terms of recycling. Some of those grades are not recyclable at all.

Currently we recycle 9% of plastics, sorting through the cheaper grades is non-trivial, we can't recycle our way out of this mess.

Burning plastic will just create more pollution, capturing outgassing from burning is also non-trivial.

We should instead use less plastic, the 3 Rs start with Reduce, then Re-use and only after that Recycle.

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#98
post #4

Very nice. I live alone and often I'm baffled by the sheer amount of garbage that my urban lifestyle generates. I was not alive in the 80's but I was told that people used to use more environment-friendly packaging like glass bottles. Sometimes I wonder why this massive change to everything-should-be-packed-in-plastic happened.

> I wonder why this massive change to everything-should-be-packed-in-plastic happened I don't get why people keep pretending plastic being widely used today is due to some conspiracy instead of it's just better at its main function, even without factoring in cost. Compared to glass container, plastic ones are much lighter, harder to break, flexible, malleable, .. the list goes on. In the 1980s, the use of glass conta…

> The appeal of single-use (plastic) containers lies in their convenience. Although they are undoubtedly more wasteful, their ease of use cannot be denied. People favor them for this convenience, with their wasteful nature being an unfortunate byproduct. If we refuse to acknowledge this fundamental truth, progress in environmentalism will never be done.

Yes, they are much more convenient in multiple ways (ease of transportation due to weight, flexible and malleable to take any shape or form, etc.) but there's no pricing of the externalities, if plastics would cost as much needed to take care of their disposal in environmentally friendly ways this convenience would have a much higher cost, naturally diminishing its uses.

While the side-effects of using plastics are not priced into the material it won't ever be solved.

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recyclable is a scam perpetuated by the plastic industry. You should be using reusable glass which is expensive to replace but cheap to refill.

> a scam perpetuated by the plastic industry What does this actually mean and what are you basing it on? Without any sources or references it reads a bit like FUD.

I guess it might refer to the fact that 80% of the plastic produced ends up in landfills and it's not recycled, for different reasons, one of them is that recycling plastic is very expensive.

Also there are several different types of plastic that do not melt together, or do not melt at all, and can't be easily recycled or reused. It also degrades and becomes more toxic on every cycle and, unlike glass, health safety of recycled plastic cannot be guaranteed so to package food the only safe option is to make new plastic.

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#100
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until someone develops some sort of multi-spectral imaging that can reliably sort plastic based on it's composition there's little hope of recycling plastic. And then you still need different enzymes that can break down different compositions. It's sad, but realistically almost all plastic one disposes of needs to go in the trash can rather than recycling. You can't even rely on dedicated collection - https://abcnews…

How does Germany recycle 60% of its plastic waste? There is obviously hope, just not enough incentive because it costs.

The number is greenwashing because it's including "thermal Recycling" aka burning.

https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/daten/ressourcen-abfall/verwe...

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