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Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

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Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#121
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…

Copenhagen recycles 70% of collected plastic, with the rest incinerated (used for heating homes, I think). Almost all plastic packaging is collected, including wrappers and trays. https://affald.kk.dk/affaldsfraktion/saadan-sorterer-du-plas... (in Danish)

It's just not possible in any way to recycle 70%! Politician number fudging like this completely destroys the reputation of these initiatives.

I'm still not convinced after looking at the actual numbers, that "recycling", putting stuff into 6 different bins etc, makes any difference at all in the grand scheme og things. Instead it's a big show hiding the fact that the problem is with over-consumption and non degradable materials being legal in the first place. Bottle and glass recycling for money seems to be semi working though but then we'll need QR codes on each item, better but still not eliminating the transport and seperation issues, and the fact that a lot of recycling is actually dumping stuff on poor people far away, and that industry is polluting way more than end consumers.

As some people have pointed out it's actually the opposite, a smokescreen invented by the industry in the 90's to shift responsibility to the consumer so you do "some magic complex performance" at home and think now it's ok while everything just continues as is defacto, ie. worse than doing nothing. Instead we should ban or tax non degradable materials, and stick to the few working areas while regulating industry and materials even though it'l be rough until we're forced to create better materials.

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#122
post #119
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Do you know what percentage of after tax income people paid fir this? I'm curious how other compares to today's services.

Paid for the service? I grew up in Scotland, milk and meat came from the farms every morning (90s), you'd put your order in the old milk bottle with the money and they'd leave whatever your order was. I seem to recall it was 50p for most type of milk and 75p for creams. (Except the BSE years.. shudder ugh the BSE years.)

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where I live only restaurants can buy glass bottle soda. It is quite sad, since I like those. They are way nicer to drink from.

Where I live, everyone can buy bottled water in glass bottles. I think there are now glass bottles with Coca Cola, too, though I'm not certain (I don't drink soda). The catch is they're obscenely expensive.

There's free water in the tap

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#124
post #48
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glass is in no way environmentally friendly. It takes a huge amount of energy to produce glass, and a singel glass bottle requires a lot of it. PET bottle recycling is the closest we got to a functional plastic recycling system.

No micro plastics though which is quite nice.

People used to (and still kind of do) worry about glass chipping... ironically we can see that and deal with it. Unlike micro-plastics. Human nature right?

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#125

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.

It takes mere moments to google "how much plastic is actually recycled"

You would have to be naive to believe that executives in the petroleum and plastic industries are unaware of how little plastic is actually recycled rather than complicit.

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copenhagen recycles 70% of collected plastic, with the rest incinerated (used for heating homes, I think). Almost all plastic packaging is collected, including wrappers and trays. https://affald.kk.dk/affaldsfraktion/saadan-sorterer-du-plas... (in Danish)

It's just not possible in any way to recycle 70%! Politician number fudging like this completely destroys the reputation of these initiatives. I'm still not convinced after looking at the actual numbers, that "recycling", putting stuff into 6 different bins etc, makes any difference at all in the grand scheme og things. Instead it's a big show hiding the fact that the problem is with over-consumption and non degradab…

I have 3 bins (rubbish; garden waste; paper/soft plastic/glass), and take thin plastic and tetrapaks to the supermarket to be recycled.

Takes me months to fill the rubbish bin

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#127
Maybe I'm alone in this but I always found the silicone cap design choice to be particularly disgusting and unappetizing. Having your sauce fired to the plate at high velocity thin stream with a gross noise just isn't what I want when I'm about to eat. Doesn't take much imagination to think what it resembles in nature when you look at it.

Think I only used one of these bottles once when they were introduced what 15-20 years ago? Then I've taken the entire lid off every single time since because of how unappetizing it is. Always go with the glass bottles too if I can for the same reason.

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#128

It does mean this cap is practically impossible to clean, and provides a lot of surface area and crevices for mould to grow or plasticizers to leak from the packaging into the product. All engineering is a tradeoff, and I would be interested to see how those factors were considered when doing the redesign.

> and provides a lot of surface area and crevices for mould to grow

Isn't the whole reason Heinz ketchup is self stable is because it's too high in acidity for mold to even grow

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#129

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.

Where I grew up the reason stated when they replaced glass with plastic was that the weight of the glass alone caused more pollution from transport than the plastic bottles that replaced them

It's not just about emissions, though. Single-use plastics literally just accumulate in landfills until the end of time, while glass is highly recyclable (and one of the few economically viable ones).

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#130
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> some position that isn't even talked about. There are already lots of sibling comments saying the heavy use of plastic is "forced on people" by companies, so yes it is talked about. And that's exactly what OP implied. I'm not even saying this point is entirely false, just want to emphasize that people actually prefer convenient things regardless if it's forced on them or not.

> There are already lots of sibling comments saying the heavy use of plastic is "forced on people" by companies, so yes it is talked about. And that's exactly what OP implied. Reply to those comments instead then? Instead of assuming bad faith like "OP implied". I cannot be the only one who doesn't think parent implied anything at all and instead just asked a question why the change happened from glass to plastic.

I already replied to this guy. I honestly think his concept of convenience is overrated. I know a lot of people who would rather drink from glass than plastic. Surprisingly this convenience has never reached the beer industry and you can always have beer available in glass. I can never find milk in glass bottles though and I can't see why, I'm literally forced to use tetrapak due to the lack of options.

I think that in a lot of cases plastic is a poor container and that's why I asked the question, for me it's not obvious the convenience of the plastic nor why plastic is the only available packaging material for almost everything.

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