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Food Packaging

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Re: Food Packaging

#91

Post by tecleandor »

meghido10 wrote: post #75
unwind wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly a reference to [1] but I'm too lazy to go and check if it's visible to the naked eye. If not, fun design and weird that there was no comment by the scanning folks. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinz_57

maybe it's printed on the thin film you remove to open the cap. really dont know

Some of the heinz bottles have a small relief in the top of the cap, kinda like this:

http://flyosity.com/design/ketchup-bottles-the-physicality-o...

That's why it appears in the scan.

Re: Food Packaging

#92

Post by brnt »

And yet, I wish none of my packages had these, and would let me cut a corner off or stick to simple caps. I must have underdeveloped motor skills, but if there is one guaranteed thing to happen is that ketchup sprays everywhere, dosage caps get clogged and dry out, caps are placed such that I can't get all contents out, etc. etc.

For me, none of them work. And they often seem like an expensive component.

Re: Food Packaging

#93

Post by [deleted] »

asiachick wrote: post #79
morsch wrote: post #61

Heinz Ketchup Cap: may have solved the problem of storing the bottle upside down, but it doesn't solve the problem of 3% of the product remaining in the container and being almost impossible to retrieve. Sriracha Bottle Cap: it's a fun design, but in my experience it tends to turn filthy, sticky and basically break. Kind of terrible, really. Vita Coco Bottle Cap: okay if it works, very annoying if it doesn't. The who…

swing it around with your arm as fast as possible, cap side out.

[deleted]

Re: Food Packaging

#94

Post by sizzle »

tremon wrote: post #90
thomasguide wrote: post #83

This is very interesting, but I can’t help but feel that a glass bottle with a metal cap (and one of those Dutch condiment spatulas) would be just fine for all these applications and also be more easily and effectively reused and recycled. I re-use jam jars for food storage, drinking glasses, mini herb gardens, etc. and could incorporate bottles, jars, and other glass containers into a variety of needs around the hou…

and one of those Dutch condiment spatulas For reference, I assume you mean a bottle scraper here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bottle_scraper They're not specifically intended for condiments (most jam jars are low and wide enough that they can be scraped with a spoon), but for storing more viscous liquids in larger glass (milk) bottles, like yoghurt or vla.

Wow where has this been all my life?!? So much wasted product thrown away in bottles

Re: Food Packaging

#95

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

thomasguide wrote: post #83

This is very interesting, but I can’t help but feel that a glass bottle with a metal cap (and one of those Dutch condiment spatulas) would be just fine for all these applications and also be more easily and effectively reused and recycled. I re-use jam jars for food storage, drinking glasses, mini herb gardens, etc. and could incorporate bottles, jars, and other glass containers into a variety of needs around the hou…

You know? Maybe a few dozen standard sized and broad/wide necked tops made out of laboratory grade glass would do. That stuff is almost indestructible and does not leach or take on anything in the concentrations used for food/drink stuff. Not even tea or coffee stains! So there is the question of the returns. Why returning when you could have a refill machine in store which could clean them fast in safe ways before refilling? For anything more than a few bottles, use reusable kegs and plug them into an appliance at home? Or those watercooler canisters? I recently saw milk in a plastic bag again, like it has been about 40 years ago?

Interestingly that bag wasn't sloppy or wobbly at all, because on one side it had a handle, which felt like it was inflated with something, which made it stiff. Still one time use only, though less material.

Re: Food Packaging

#96

Post by Broken_Hippo »

Semaphor wrote: post #62
ornornor wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For contrast (pun!), Switzerland just across the border charges 6–7 times as much for the same thing. And medication too, it costs multiples more for the same medicine in CH than anywhere else in Europe just because.

You also earn closer to US salaries. A friend of mine moved to Switzerland, and he jokes that Swiss cleaners at the border hire German cleaners for their places ;)

"You also earn closer to US salaries."

You say this like it is a good thing. Do folks at the bottom third have to endure the same sort of poverty, earning wages their parents earned yet paying more for everything?

Oh, I'm guessing you just mean folks that are in certain fields, and that really isn't representative of US wages. Normal folks are pretty poor.

Re: Food Packaging

#97

Post by thomasguide »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #87
thomasguide wrote: post #83

This is very interesting, but I can’t help but feel that a glass bottle with a metal cap (and one of those Dutch condiment spatulas) would be just fine for all these applications and also be more easily and effectively reused and recycled. I re-use jam jars for food storage, drinking glasses, mini herb gardens, etc. and could incorporate bottles, jars, and other glass containers into a variety of needs around the hou…

That sound you heard was me rolling my eyes at the bunch of nonsense they started off with, which seemed sucked straight from the mouth of a plastics industry PR lackey. The squeeze nipple thingy is pretty brilliant, but an ecological disaster.

As a cook I find the squeeze actually sort of frustrating. Sometimes it usefully delivers the right amount of ketchup (or mustard, or whatever) to its destination; mostly it splatters. In any case I still have to use a knife to spread it around.

Solving the leaky bottle upside down problem is too narrow a focus.

Re: Food Packaging

#98

Post by thomasguide »

panta wrote: post #89
thomasguide wrote: post #83

This is very interesting, but I can’t help but feel that a glass bottle with a metal cap (and one of those Dutch condiment spatulas) would be just fine for all these applications and also be more easily and effectively reused and recycled. I re-use jam jars for food storage, drinking glasses, mini herb gardens, etc. and could incorporate bottles, jars, and other glass containers into a variety of needs around the hou…

> Transportation costs and breakage are perhaps higher, but maybe that’s a cost we should accept? I suspect that transportation and breakage costs are higher only because we don't account for externalities when considering plastic: in other words producers don't sustain the full costs and are effectively subsidized by the society at large and the environment (through increased healthcare spending, lower QOL, higher o…

Yes, this is a good point. Plastic is cheap because producers don’t pay the true costs.

There are externalities with glass too (think shattered bottles in public spaces) but my feeling is they’re fewer and less earth-destroying.

Re: Food Packaging

#99

Post by thomasguide »

LargoLasskhyfv wrote: post #95
thomasguide wrote: post #83

This is very interesting, but I can’t help but feel that a glass bottle with a metal cap (and one of those Dutch condiment spatulas) would be just fine for all these applications and also be more easily and effectively reused and recycled. I re-use jam jars for food storage, drinking glasses, mini herb gardens, etc. and could incorporate bottles, jars, and other glass containers into a variety of needs around the hou…

You know? Maybe a few dozen standard sized and broad/wide necked tops made out of laboratory grade glass would do. That stuff is almost indestructible and does not leach or take on anything in the concentrations used for food/drink stuff. Not even tea or coffee stains! So there is the question of the returns. Why returning when you could have a refill machine in store which could clean them fast in safe ways before r…

Plastic American-style milk bottles are funnily enough one of the only easily recycled plastics, if I am remembering correctly.

Standardized glass containers would be useful, although in some ways already exist (mason jars usually accept common lids, for instance).

What we need is a shift in mentality away from a plastic-first approach.

“I’ve got one word for you kid: glass.”

Re: Food Packaging

#100

Post by 9dev »

LargoLasskhyfv wrote: post #95
thomasguide wrote: post #83

This is very interesting, but I can’t help but feel that a glass bottle with a metal cap (and one of those Dutch condiment spatulas) would be just fine for all these applications and also be more easily and effectively reused and recycled. I re-use jam jars for food storage, drinking glasses, mini herb gardens, etc. and could incorporate bottles, jars, and other glass containers into a variety of needs around the hou…

You know? Maybe a few dozen standard sized and broad/wide necked tops made out of laboratory grade glass would do. That stuff is almost indestructible and does not leach or take on anything in the concentrations used for food/drink stuff. Not even tea or coffee stains! So there is the question of the returns. Why returning when you could have a refill machine in store which could clean them fast in safe ways before r…

For reference, this is what we do with beer bottles in Germany. There’s two standard bottle types which you can return to shops, which take any brand, as long as it’s the standard type. They return them to a cleaning facility which distributes them back to the breweries (extremely simplified, there’s lots of details like a mandatory deposit on reusable bottles consumers pay to incentivise returning them to stores). But basically, bottles get reused as long as they’re usable. It works quite well!
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