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Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

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Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#421

Post by gs17 »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #53
throw1231312 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container-deposit_legislation I can't even begin to imagine the discourse (and "experts" brought on-air at Fox News) that would take place if such legislation was proposed in the US.

We do. As Fox News likes to point out, it's hard to find a place that'll actually let you recycle for the full refund.

In Michigan, I never ran into difficulty outside of needing to take it to a store that sells it (Trader Joe's is the biggest pain). Supposedly there were a lot of places putting arbitrary hours on when they accept them now, but I've never heard anyone not get the "full refund" unless a machine malfunctions.

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#422

Post by wolverine876 »

0_____0 wrote: post #271
drewdevault wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only genuine path to sustainability is reduction. There is no sustainable way to have disposable single-use packaging that you throw away when the bottle empties. Glass bottles with a deposit to incentivize bottle return, following which they are washed and refilled with new product (ideally locally, with fresh ketchup arriving to local distribution centers in bulk), is a much more reasonable approach.

There's a cost associated with bottle return as well. Consumers also may feel weird about buying used packaging. What I have seen work quite well is bulk filling stations in hippie groceries. So far liquid dispensing is limited to non-food e.g. laundry detergent but if people can grasp that model I think it can expand to a lot more items.

> Consumers also may feel weird ...

Any change requires doing things that people are unfamiliar with. Most of human history - 99.9..% of it - didn't have single-use disposable packaging, and did heavily reuse 'packaging' (containers).

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#423

Post by wolverine876 »

nerdponx wrote: post #363
jrochkind1 wrote: post #223

> 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 Woul…

On the topic of the interesting engineering puzzle... I went to a university job fair in 2014 and Heinz had a booth there. I remember asking the recruiter what kind of positions they were recruiting for, and her only response was "We are looking for top talent. Are you top talent?" I was pretty thrown off by that, so pressed her with "Top talent in what? I know statistics and programming, do you need anyone who can d…

The screening technique is straightforward and not surprising: They have to filter a few people from possibly hundreds of resumes. They need a way to narrow it down rapidly, even if imperfectly. They don't want to invest time in your resume if even you don't think you qualify.

There's a false negative problem, as in all interviews: interviewing well is a different skill than engineering bottle caps. Still, confident, talented people who are on their toes and accustomed to pressure may respond convincingly. So will con artists and the self-deluding types like megalomaniacs, so there's also a false positive problem ...

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#424

Post by zeroCalories »

Tokkemon wrote: post #374
zeroCalories wrote: post #348

There is no sustainable or recyclable. If you want to reduce pollution and trash, you should reduce consumption first. Heinz and grocery store could move to allowing users to re-fill bottles, but instead they waste our time on stuff like this.

And how would that work in a sanitary and efficient way?

You ever been to a fast food place in the U.S? They have ketchup dispensers.

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#425

Post by wolverine876 »

asadotzler wrote: post #399
ezrast wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no reason the tax needs to directly reflect the environmental impact. We figure out an amount that is enough to change corporate behavior without bankrupting them, maybe with some kind of sliding scale to put more responsibility on larger businesses who would otherwise benefit from regulatory capture, throw in some exceptions for the aforementioned medical devices, etc. "Pricing the externalities in" is a nic…

and when they jack up prices, we use the tax revenue to subsidize the poor so only the well off pay that assholery, we can do this for carbon in all forms.

For someone so skeptical, why buy the 'cost increases will be passed on to the consumer' BS? Clearly that's not true.

First, price increases depend on elasticity. I'm guessing that ketchup demand is pretty elastic; it's not diabetes medication or higher education.

Also, we can assume Heinz, being sophisticated, has already priced it for the highest possible marginal return; there's not necessarily room for increasing the price without reducing return (by driving down sales).

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#426

Post by Rebelgecko »

distances wrote: post #143
Rebelgecko wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do. As Fox News likes to point out, it's hard to find a place that'll actually let you recycle for the full refund.

In Europe the store that sold the deposit bottles has to also accept them back.

That used to be true here, but they added so many exceptions that the law isn't really enforced

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#427

Post by wolverine876 »

sandos wrote: post #418
Mistletoe wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we honestly with a straight face tell ourselves that consumers are going to remove this cap before recycling and place them in the right bins or there is a recycling facility somewhere with workers removing caps from ketchup bottles? It’s a ludicrous greenwashing idea from the get go. I love the idea of recycling but I just don’t do it anymore when I realized my city’s single stream recycling was likely just endin…

Works in the EU. I wonder how the cultures can be so different!

Does the EU have reactionaries who deny anything and everything is possible?

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#428

Post by numpad0 »

themaninthedark wrote: post #334
gwbas1c wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I spend about an hour sorting trash each week That gets to the clear difference between Japanese culture and US culture. Americans will sort their trash, but they won't spend that much time sorting their trash. Japanese culture has an immense amount of civic pride and responsibility that isn't present in the US.

>Collection happens at central points shared by a few houses. So if you fuck it up, your neighbors will know. >Collection happens through individual small trucks and the guy check the items and sort them directly into larger bins. If you made a mistake they will label it and leave it behind. Part of it is the fact that neighbors police each other. Culturally we tend to reject when others are intruding in our business…

We use translucent plastic bags for trash as well, not that tall bin with lids. So a bag full of sausage bags in the bottles day at the neighborhood collection point sticks out.

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#429

Post by numpad0 »

chickenchase-r wrote: post #90
huytersd wrote: post #29

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

Historically it was pure glass but modern retro recreations usually adds that plastic cap, pusher rod and a plastic wrapper for easier manufacturing as well as for corporate liabilities. Those aren't technically necessary.

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#430

Post by handsclean »

xyzzyz wrote: post #380
audunw wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But PP is one of the plastics that CAN be recycled, and IS recycled, often at a much higher rate than in the US. One of the barriers of effectively recycling PP is the mixing of materials in packaging. I know some brands in my country switched labels to make sure the bottle was uniform and recognises by recycling machines as PP. So what Heinz is doing here is actually meaningful. The other problem USA has is poor edu…

> The other problem USA has is poor education and lack of well separated waste streams. I’ve personally experienced ridiculous “wishcycling” from my extended family in the US where they just throw whatever they want to feel good about throwing away in the recycling bin without looking up what should go in there. In normal economy, the key to success is specialization. Instead of training each worker on each task, we…

If specialization were always better then we’d hire a different specialist to press each key on the keyboard. Specialization is only efficient when the specialist can do a better job, and by enough to outweigh overhead. Rough sorting is extremely basic and requires no “training”, so specialization is less efficient, and serves only to shift work to people whose time is valued less.
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