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Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

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Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#221

Post by s3p »

coryfklein wrote: post #217

In the third paragraph: > The new cap appears as a uniform color in Voyager’s range map... compare it to the old cap, whose silicone valve is denser than the surrounding plastic. Author: you must be completely blind. Both photos show a wide gradient of colors including blue, green, yellow, and deep orange! Why does orange in the left photo mean "it is silicone" but orange on the right means "it is PP"?

I agree with what you're saying, but the general statement by the author seems to hold up. They don't appear to be the exact same shade of orange, as the silicone tip is a bright, deep orange, and the cap on the right only has little mixtures of orange in the overall shape.

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#222

Post by Fluorescence »

petepete wrote: post #8
lp4vn wrote: 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

I remember how birds learned that the silver-top milk had a thick lay of cream so if you didn't fetch it in pronto, you'd find all your bottles would have the tops pecked through.

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#223

Post by jrochkind1 »

> Currently only about 3% of PP products are being recycled in the United States, but it is becoming more widely accepted

So now the relatively small amount of mass in the cap is just as recyclable as the bottle itself -- neither are actually going to be recycled.

There's nothing to see here but marketing. And a an interesting engineering puzzle solved, sure.

"How Big Oil Misled The Public Into Believing Plastic Would Be Recycled"

https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-...

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#224

Post by lupire »

fedeb95 wrote: post #188

you know what could be sustainable? A bring-your-own bottle policy in stores. Deliver big dispensers to stores, and let people refill. All the rest is a very marginal reduction unlikely to have an effect in the long run. In a complex environment, where we can't make predictions, is better to be cautious.

Bottle exchange is better than that. People don't want people bringing filthy containers into the store.

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#225

Post by swashboon »

coryfklein wrote: post #217

In the third paragraph: > The new cap appears as a uniform color in Voyager’s range map... compare it to the old cap, whose silicone valve is denser than the surrounding plastic. Author: you must be completely blind. Both photos show a wide gradient of colors including blue, green, yellow, and deep orange! Why does orange in the left photo mean "it is silicone" but orange on the right means "it is PP"?

In the right image the dark orange is the bottle which is a separate (uniform) piece.

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#226

Post by InSteady »

jgalt212 wrote: post #213
Hizonner wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know what's more efficient than glass? Ship the product in bulk and dispense it into the customer's container. And a lot of products could actually be formulated on site, because most of, say, your cleaning aisle is various combinations of relatively few standard components. The biggest barrier there are certain people's desires to control information and to create the perception of distinctions that don't exist.

> You know what's more efficient than glass? Ship the product in bulk and dispense it into the customer's container. yeah, that would be a great use of everyone's time. line up at the olive oil station, line up at the beer station, line up at the flour station, line up at the coffee station, line up at the ketchup station, .... and then on top of that, add up the time and expense of everyone getting a different price…

Better go on polluting up the world for generations to come. Wouldn't want to make anyone wait a few moments for essential goods.

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#227

Post by ddejohn »

jgalt212 wrote: post #213
Hizonner wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know what's more efficient than glass? Ship the product in bulk and dispense it into the customer's container. And a lot of products could actually be formulated on site, because most of, say, your cleaning aisle is various combinations of relatively few standard components. The biggest barrier there are certain people's desires to control information and to create the perception of distinctions that don't exist.

> You know what's more efficient than glass? Ship the product in bulk and dispense it into the customer's container. yeah, that would be a great use of everyone's time. line up at the olive oil station, line up at the beer station, line up at the flour station, line up at the coffee station, line up at the ketchup station, .... and then on top of that, add up the time and expense of everyone getting a different price…

Bulk sections have existed in grocery stores for a very long time, and work perfectly fine lol.

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#229

Post by blacksmith_tb »

speff wrote: post #190
kostko wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your lifestyle does not generate garbage. Companies that sell non recyclables and non compostsbles generate garbage. Why hasnt cocacola replaced their plastics with something compostable? There are new inventions for replacing plastics out each day, I wonder where those inventions end up.

If coca cola's your example, then I'm going to affirm that yes, it is the lifestyle that generates garbage. People don't _need_ soda. But they want it at a low price that's cheaper than Pepsi. You know what that means? Coke's going to be shipping in the cheapest container possible to keep the price edge - which is plastic. If soda drinkers cared about plastic consumption, they would switch to anything that has glass…

Tea drinker here, but doesn't a lot of soda globally come in aluminum cans, which are actually recyclable?

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#230

Post by coryfklein »

Symbiote wrote: post #23
obmelvin wrote: 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)

Does "recyling" include paying Chinese "recyclers" to take it? Because if so then I don't think it's actually being recycled.

What, pray tell, are they doing with this low-grade recycled plastic? Putting park benches out into the environment that will degrade faster, distributing microplastics everywhere?

Or are they investing a ton of time and energy to recycle the plastic into higher use (than park benches), which likely has significant input energy costs, which in turn is probably harming the environment?

You can't get anything for free, and recycling plastics least of all. The most environmentally friendly solution I'm aware of today is to simply relocate it all into one contained location and incinerating it as cleanly as possible or burying it in a landfill with protective sheeting. We're not even close to running out of landfill acreage on this planet.

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