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Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

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Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#431

Post by plussed_reader »

infecto wrote: post #314
plussed_reader wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Banning micro-plastic sources from consumer purposes isn't so silly if it contributes to dementia and other neurological issues long term. They're finding they stuff embedded in utero lining; your argument strikes me as the same old rebuttal to the things we can't political agree to study. You can't deny there is a lot of business momentum to keep plastics in production, no? And yet the more we learn the more checkma…

Not sure why you are bringing politics up. This has nothing to do with it. We most definitely need to fully study the impacts of plastics on the human body. We don’t know the full extent of what it’s doing and it’s important we figure it out. It’s a complicated equation that we do not fully understand. It’s easy to say just ban it but there is are a lot of other negative consequences that will come out of that decisi…

But we should keep producing more year on year until it's studied properly?

Studied by whom? Petrochemical companies have studies on their stuff back for decades. They'd never endanger the public to improve their bottom line. Plastics are fine, dontchaknow?

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#432

Post by nerdponx »

wolverine876 wrote: post #423
nerdponx wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

I just thought it was a particularly extreme version, to the point of being silly and funny in hindsight.

Were they looking for chemists? Programmers? Mechanical engineers? Project managers? Janitors?

I'm top talent with a vacuum cleaner (at least according to my mom), but I wasn't thinking along those lines at the job fair.

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#433

Post by Dylan16807 »

khrbrt wrote: post #407
xyzzyz wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mining sand for glass is really negligible environmental destruction. Extra energy needed for recycling vs fresh glass has worse environmental impact.

Mining sand has terrible effects on riverine ecosystems. You can't just use the sand at the beach.

For bottle purposes, why can't you use basically any sand?

Assume the bottles don't have to be super clear.

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#434

Post by Dylan16807 »

lobochrome wrote: post #359
themaninthedark wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

But one of the beautiful things of living here is to witness (positiv) societal change happening in crazy speed. It used to be that people smoked everywhere, 10 years ago certain districts started prohibiting smoking in the street and relegated smokers to certain corners, today this corners have been replaced by closed containers with air conditioning and filtration systems. It sometimes feels magical…

Putting that kind of pressure into cleaning up smoking is pretty cool.

Putting so many hours into recycling... well it depends on how much that actually accomplishes. Because that is a huge amount of labor.

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#435

Post by Dylan16807 »

madeofpalk wrote: post #327
rekttrader wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My bet is that it is just cheaper to make without the silicone and as an added bonus it’s more recyclable. It’s just cost savings that can be greenwashed.

Nice! It's cheaper and less bad? Seems like a win/win.

Very tiny wins though, so don't let them squeak out of anything else because they already did "something".

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#436

Post by fshbbdssbbgdd »

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…

I agree in principle with specialization, but I don’t think it applies well to this case. Before you throw stuff in the bin, it’s already mostly separated. After it’s in the bin, everything is getting crushed and squashed together before it can reach a plant where it can be picked apart and separated.

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#437

Post by azemetre »

asadotzler wrote: post #402
Tokkemon wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People die from food poisoning. No one has died from microplastics, so far as we can tell.

you don't actually know that. if, imagine, the increase in dementia or cancer or any major illness is increased at all by microplastics, and we will find this out before long, and it will indict Big Plastic and Big Oil, we will learn it's killed far more of us that you whoring for Big Oil and Big Plastic suggests.

These subthreads from my comments are absolutely bonkers, people are willing to give companies that routinely lie to us again and again sometimes lying for literal generations to us!

and people STILL give them the benefit of the doubt.

People willing to allow others to poison us so they can earn money.

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#438

Post by Mistletoe »

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!

https://www.europeanscientist.com/en/environment/plastic-for...

>They discovered that a massive 46 per cent of European separated plastic waste is exported outside the country of origin.

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#440

Post by colordrops »

Tokkemon wrote: post #376
itslennysfault wrote: post #239

All this work and plastic recycling still is a horrible and toxic practice. Here is an innovation Heinz can work on... go back to glass bottles. https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2023/05/plastics-rec...

Everyone hates those.

Who is everyone? I prefer a glass jar with a spoon.

Even if the majority of people hate it, so what. They hate turning off lights and monitoring electricity usage and driving under the speed limit and wiping their ass.

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