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Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

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11–20 of 472 posts

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#11
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.

The answer is money ofc

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#13
post #7
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…

I wonder how much plastic you'd need to pile up to start pressing out oil again at the bottom of the pile?

You mean ... by gravity? :-D

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#14
post #9
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Which sort of highlights local vs national production and shipping. The local milkman of the 50s, did better with glass collecting and delivering milk. The national enterprise benefits, as you say, from weight reduction.

The enterprise "benefits" because it completely off-loads the environmental impact to the tax payers.

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#15
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 was born in the 50's. Growing up, the worst thing about the garbage generated at home was that it had to go into leftover paper bags from the grocery store because plastic garbage bags didn't exist. And those bags went into metal garbage cans outside the house, because plastic garbage cans didn't exist, and those garbage cans were always dented, rusty, and with lids that quickly stopped sealing properly. What a mess.

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#16
post #6

> Heinz has taken a major step forward for sustainable packaging with the introduction of .... > The new cap's uniform composition of polypropylene (PP) simplifies recycling and ... > Currently only about 3% of PP products are being recycled in the United States.

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…

Conventional multispectral and hyperspectral can't keep up (and integrate well) into existing sorting lines. They induce a slow-down in conveyer belt speeds or you have to install splitters and buy multiple $100K cameras.

(we're working to solve this problem though in the classic VC backed way - DM for more information!)

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#17
post #10

> Heinz has taken a major step forward for sustainable packaging with the introduction of .... > The new cap's uniform composition of polypropylene (PP) simplifies recycling and ... > Currently only about 3% of PP products are being recycled in the United States.

The recycling also doesn't achieve anything environmentally

The recycling reduces the amount of oil that goes into new plastic, which eventually will be incinerated and contribute to the climate crisis.

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#18
post #9
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Which sort of highlights local vs national production and shipping. The local milkman of the 50s, did better with glass collecting and delivering milk. The national enterprise benefits, as you say, from weight reduction.

And as the cost of workforce increase, or in order to generate even more profit, using plastics enables industrial automation and removal of the delivery workforce.

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#20
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

The noise of the electric milk float was oddly haunting. Partly because it was generally still dark outside.
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