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Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

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Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#441

Post by twobitshifter »

b112 wrote: post #9
dmitrygr wrote: 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 only way we get this hyper optimized bottle cap is with a dominant global ketchup superpower. They will save enormous amounts of money with this cap, because of the giant volume of sales that they do.

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#442

Post by bastawhiz »

queuebert wrote: post #361
bastawhiz wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fairness, for ketchup specifically, glass bottles are an incredible nuisance.

That used to be part of the excitement.

It was always a surprise how ketchupy your food would be! Maybe a little, maybe completely!

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#443

Post by ricardobeat »

throwawaaarrgh wrote: post #338
rufus_foreman wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heinz ketchup ingredients: TOMATO CONCENTRATE FROM RED RIPE TOMATOES, DISTILLED VINEGAR, HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, CORN SYRUP, SALT, SPICE, ONION POWDER, NATURAL FLAVORING. -- https://www.heinz.com/products/00013000006408-tomato-ketchup

It does look like there's no preservatives added to heinz. It appears the lack of mold growth in ketchup comes down to a combination of lower pH from the vinegar, and low water content by cooking it out of the tomatoes. According to some food safety experts, it's possible for mold to grow on ketchup, less so for pathogens. Keeping it cold will definitely extend the time it would take mold to root.

The story is that Heinz specifically developed their recipe to avoid the use of benzoate over 100 years ago. Ketchup at the time was a completely different condiment: much thinner and not nearly as sweet, salty and vinegary, and also absolutely loaded with preservatives.

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#444

Post by ricardobeat »

callalex wrote: post #311
s0rce wrote: post #295

A glass bottle/jar with a metal cap is far superior if the goal was sustainability. Maybe the user experience isn't as desirable but more plastic that isn't going to get recycled doesn't' seem great...

How is packaging that weighs hundreds of times as much, requiring burning hundreds of times as much fuel to transport, more sustainable?

Local manufacturing + renewable energy for transportation.

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#445

Post by paulmd »

handsclean wrote: post #430
xyzzyz wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Rough sorting is extremely basic and requires no “training”,

This is obviously false from the start. the entire problem is that it does require training and people don’t perform the task very effectively as a result.

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#446

Post by kromem »

ccc3 wrote: post #286
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…

This is a pessimistic, anti-progress perspective. As you point out, there are plenty of other problems in the recycling chain. But this is a small step in the right direction. And the investment here is pretty small too. $1.2m probably covered a handful of engineers for around a year plus the cost of tooling. Given that Heinz sells a lot of ketchup, I would expect that the impact/dollar here is pretty high. Also, I’d…

> But this is a small step in the right direction.

You know what, you're right. Here, one second...

Ok, I scooted a half foot in the direction of the peak of Everest.

Man, it's exhausting living a life of adventure like I do. At this point, I wager I must be half Sherpa.

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#448

Post by zvr »

lobochrome wrote: post #294
RandallBrown wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bottle and can recycling machines are common in the United States as well, although only in places with bottle/can deposits. Many recycling centers in the US use single stream recycling where the waste is separated into separate streams at the recycling plant. I'm sure this only works well for glass and metal items but I don't see any reason that it eventually wouldn't get better.

The first principle hack here is to put the waste stream separation burden on the consumer. Here in Japan we are sorting and packaging our trash all at home and putting it out to be collected individually. There is - cardboard (to be cut flat and bundled with string) - unlaminated and clean paper (to be bundled with string or collected in a paper bag) - PET (clean, no bottle cap, label removed) - Milk cartons above 1…

This is amazing!

Here in Germany, the only additional breakdown is that "glass" is separated into brown glass, green glass, and white (or clear) glass. Usually thought as beer / wine / other.

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#449

Post by lm28469 »

lupire wrote: post #209
lm28469 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Germany we have reusable thick plastic bottles, and a deposit system that's attractive enough for people to bother bringing them back (or for homeless people to collect them). Not perfect but much better than single use plastic

I don't think "army of homeless people" deserves a place in our comprehensive solution to social ills.

That ship has sailed (or sunk) a long long time ago

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#450

Post by fennecbutt »

Who gives a damn, Heinz? Just another corporation.

I want our governments to force a single type of robust, completely reusable and recyclable packaging for each major type of product.

At a supermarket, if buying meat, it comes in a sturdy reusable plastic container that we pay a deposit on. The next time you shop you bring them back for them to be cleaned/reused and you get your deposit back (or use the credit for cleaned containers for the current shopping trip).

Every bottle of any kind of sauce should be the exact same. Every packaging for every product should be standardised and exactly the same. Glass door or open refrigerators should be banned, open hot areas should be banned.

This'll never happen, but I'm so disappointed with every single shopping trip I make, walking past open hot areas with rotisserie chickens RIGHT NEXT TO open fucking fridges, all filled with products in their own unique multi-plastic-cardboard printed colour bomb packaging. It's just so despicable that we don't care about this for some reason?

Environmentalism has become a sad joke because we're gonna kill this planet, no doubt about it. :/

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