Yes I am aware that they’re somehow supposed to reduce plastic waste because the cap can’t get lost … unless you cut it off, of course.

Yes I am also aware that there are people with disabilities (shaky hands, weak grip, etc.) who are thankful for these and actually like the design. Good for them, and I mean that in a non-sarcastic way.

But personally, I hate these things with all the “first world problems” rage I can muster and go out of my way to rip / cut / twist them off on every single bottle I buy. I don’t like having the bottle cap directly in my face while drinking, or slipping in the way of the flow whenever I just want to pour milk, and on more than one occasion, I’ve actually cut my finger OR lip on these little sh*ts (not the same type as in the picture, but baldy-made longer “bands” that leave little plastic spikes on the cap and/or band).

No idea whether I should post this in the “unpopular opinion” section instead or if other people think the same, but to me, “mildly infuriating” describes them perfectly.

    • DarkThoughts@fedia.io
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      5 months ago

      Pretty much. Whenever I see these type of posts I can only think of some cavemen failing to figure out the most simple contraption. Those caps are literally not a problem at all, assuming you’re not a complete moron.

      • Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee
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        Its often the little things like this that make it clear for me who is indeed a moron.
        Like oh, omg, that explains so much about that person.
        That poor thing.

        Now, I def need to not equate that with ‘capabilities’ of someone, even morons can brute-force achieve things I could never. They do it despite the handicap and I respect that.

        Dont want to discuss problems or brainstorm when them but respect nonetheless (them and their work).

        Most of us are in fact not what it’s commonly considered neurotypical (I beehive they are a smol but just the most vocal group). And just like with folk on introverts/depressed/ADHD/autism/etc spectrum it’s best to recognise, acknowledge, respect, and adapt to that (ie work and communicate a bit differently with each one of us, it doesn’t take all that much, and the learning curve is just so unbelievably good at the start).

    • Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee
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      Yes, this is exactly it.

      Is we just invented bottle caps for the fist time ever these exact same peeps would complain about it.

  • coffinwood@discuss.tchncs.de
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    5 months ago

    If everyone had either stopped buying bottled beverages or cleaned up after themselves, this wouldn’t be an issue.

    Also, y’all sound a little whiny. This isn’t even a first world problem.

    • RecluseRamble@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      5 months ago

      stopped buying bottled beverages

      What’s the alternative in your opinion? I don’t think barrels and glasses are viable in every case. Serious question.

      • coffinwood@discuss.tchncs.de
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        5 months ago

        You’re coming up with a sarcastic exaggeration (barrels and glasses), followed by “serious question”. So which is it now?

        Anyway. How about refillable cups, travel mugs, returnable bottles? Stop buying bottled water if your tap water is fine. Get a soda maker if you like sparkling water or Spritzer. Clean up after yourselves, return or throw away bottles with the lid on.

        And first and foremost: stop buying packaged and bottled sh*t at every possible occasion. Things like single-use / to-go cups or bottles shouldn’t even exist.

        We all created the landfills and ocean garbage patches and now we complain about our own stupidity, unable to drink from a bottle with a lid attached to it like we’re toddlers.

        If you seriously ask me for an alternative: stop creating waste. Stop complaining about your waste. And stop complaining about regulations that try to limit waste that shouldn’t even be there. Big part of the problem stems from our own laziness and consumerism. Everyone is part of the problem, nobody wants to be a part of the solution. What did you even expect?

        • RecluseRamble@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          5 months ago

          I hardly want to reply for your aggressiveness. I don’t see how that’s been called for.

          But yes, I was being serious because you explicitly excluded all bottles by “bottled beverages”. So I thought, water can be replaced by tap water (I do that personally because I don’t want carry crates that are unnecessary) but what about beer, for example? I could order kegs (no sarcasm, they start at 5 liters) but can hardly take them with me.

          So, by “bottled beverages” you don’t count “returnable bottles”. Apart from that differentiation not being obvious, it didn’t occur to me because in my country almost all sold bottles are returnable, even single-use ones.

          Hope that clarifies my question. Maybe next time don’t immediately jump to conclusions and make assumptions about other people’s lifestyle.

          • coffinwood@discuss.tchncs.de
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            5 months ago

            Sorry, it’s aggravating to see people complain about bottle lids and not seeing what the bigger problem behind is.

            We created this mess and now the least bad thing in this literal pile of garbage gets labelled ‘mildly infuriating’.

        • cley_faye@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          Your solution to people wanting to buy some specific drinks is “don’t buy the thing you want, buy something else”. Hardly an answer.

          • coffinwood@discuss.tchncs.de
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            5 months ago

            Why is it “hardly an answer”?

            Getting everything you want at any time is part of the reason why the planet’s dying. Consumerism is not sustainable. Just one example: one wants a coffee and isn’t at home. Solution today: get a single-use plasticcy paper cup of coffee with an optional packaged portion of sweetener and / or cream, a plastic stirring thingy, and a plastic lid. All that goes to waste because people were led to believe that a “paper” cup is good for the environment. It isn’t.

    • zeekaran@sopuli.xyz
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      5 months ago

      I haven’t bought a plastic bottle beverage in forever*. I just get metal cans or glass bottles. Or nothing.

      *I bought a lot of PET bottled beverages in Japan but I was just visiting.

  • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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    5 months ago

    This is some very short sighted thinking.

    Caps attached to the bottles is very important to the recycling industry, so they can be more cheaply and efficiently shipped to China and thrown into the sea.

    • weker01@feddit.de
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      5 months ago

      Source on that? As far as I know China stopped importing plastic waste as they realized it was too expensive for the state as they are burdened with the externalities, i.e. cleanup.

      • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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        I think a few years ago it was China. Now it will be anybody else who wants Western money and doesn’t mind burning plastic. Malaysia and Turkey seem popular for the UK. Not sure where the US sends it. It sure as shit isn’t recycled in any way that people would think of as recycling.

        I’ve no idea why we make plastic bottled drinks when aluminium cans exist.

      • FierySpectre@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Small bits like caps can’t get sorted for recycling for some reason, so they’re just “waste” instead of recyclable

    • RecluseRamble@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      5 months ago

      This generalization is a problem. Assessing the whole life cycle, the carbon footprint of glass bottles is problematic and plastics is a viable alternative.

      You have to consider the significantly higher weight of glass increasing carbon emissions from transportation.

      While plastics bottles can only be reused about half as often as glass bottles, their production is far more energy-efficient (glass production is done at temps of 1400-1600 °C or 2500-3000 °F while plastics use temperatures from 160-300 °C or 320-600 °F) which also reduces carbon footprint in basically every country.

      Of course recycling has to be taken seriously and properly organized to prevent plastics just ending up in nature. But we have to balance the micro-plastics problem against climate change. We need to solve both.

      • Geth@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        5 months ago

        It used to be done a lot more before and some places still do it in Europe. You return the glass bottle intact, they reuse it as is. Only carbon spent is in transporting it.

        • RBG@discuss.tchncs.de
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          5 months ago

          Well, you also have to clean them which I assume also uses energy. And they need to be fulfilling “food-grade” cleaning requirements since you want to drink out of them, so that’s probably more energy needed than a simple wash in soap.

          • Frokke@lemmings.world
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            5 months ago

            This is done regardless of the source of the glass. IE fresh or reused glass gets the same cleaning treatment.

        • RecluseRamble@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          5 months ago

          Yes (I actually live in Europe), but it cannot be reused indefinitely and needs to be recycled after about 50 uses (that’s why I mentioned the whole life cycle of a bottle). Also, glass breaks.

        • Aux@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          It’s done less and less because recycling plastic bottles is better.

      • half_built_pyramids@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        You have to consider the significantly higher weight of glass increasing carbon emissions from transportation.

        If the transportation was electrical renewable sourced this wouldn’t be a factor.

        their production is far more energy-efficient (glass production is done at temps of 1400-1600 °C or 2500-3000 °F while plastics use temperatures from 160-300 °C or 320-600 °F)

        If manufacturing was electrical renewable sourced this wouldn’t be a factor.

        I don’t want micro plastics in my nutsack. I don’t care that it’ll be a long time before we get there. We should start getting there now. I don’t want to hear perfectionist fallacy arguments about why I should be happy to have plastics swimming around with my sperm.

        • RecluseRamble@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          5 months ago

          I don’t want to hear perfectionist fallacy arguments

          You mean like the ones you gave if there was a 100% renewable power grid and transportation was 100% electrical glass would be carbon neutral?

          Well, both aren’t and we are a long way from either, so that argument stands. You may care about your nutsack, as do I about my own, but climate change is the more critical problem.

    • Aux@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Glass bottles are much much worse for the environment.

  • nomad@infosec.pub
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    5 months ago

    They are mostly there to prevent sea animals from swallowing the cap and dying a slow agonizing death…

      • nomad@infosec.pub
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        5 months ago

        I absolutely agree. Sadly alot of smaller nations get payed to dispose and recycle and then just throw the trash into the ocean. There are even areas that just have no trash disposal system in place other than the local rivers.

  • L0rdMathias@sh.itjust.works
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    5 months ago

    You can rotate the bottle before taking a sip to position it such that the cap doesn’t hit your face. You can also pour liquid out of the bottle without having it run into the cap using the same rotation technique before pouring.

    • amotio@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Apparently this very advanced technique is too complicated for some people.

      • Vinny_93@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Just like not throwing the cap at some helpless plant when going to the supermarket recycling the bottle

    • Ekky@sopuli.xyz
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      5 months ago

      I had quite some beef with the tethered caps in the beginning when they didn’t latch properly, but have since gotten used to them. That said:

      • Cap on top -> Funny hat for nose!
      • Cap on bottom -> Beard gets to take a moist nap.
      • Cap on sides -> Mustache also gets to take a sip!

      Obviously not much of a problem. I’d need to clean my facial hair either way if eating ice cream or other messy foods, but cap rotation might not be effective if your “face” sticks out 1-2cm from your mouth.

      One could also attempt to rotate the cap in a way to achieve quantum tunneling, but I don’t feel that I’ve achieved that level of “tethered cap proficiency” yet.

    • redisdead@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      I just rip them off. It’s a straight up pointless thing designed solely to annoy people while providing no benefit whatsoever.

      People who defend that kind of shit probably believe that plastic straws were going to be the downfall of humanity.

    • leftzero@lemmynsfw.com
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      5 months ago

      You can rotate the bottle before taking a sip to position it such that the cap doesn’t hit your face.

      And gravity will make the cap spin around, hit your face, get in the way of the liquid, and make it splash everywhere but your mouth.

      You can also pour liquid out of the bottle without having it run into the cap using the same rotation technique before pouring.

      Same issue. As soon as you tip the bottle the cap will spin (apparently whatever genius designed this useless annoyance didn’t realise that bottle necks are cylindrical), get in the way of the liquid, and make it spill everywhere but the container you’re trying to pour it into.

      They’re like a Pythagorean cup without the temperance lesson and well thought out design.

      The only way to use these without wasting 99% of the liquid and making a mess is to either awkwardly try to hold them up as you pour, or to violently rip them out before pouring in an entirely justified fit of righteous rage.

      What an utterly infuriating waste of plastic, time, and money.

      • breadsmasher@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Does america have terrible bottle designs or something? Not one single bottle with tethered cap has ever freely spun, you can move it and it stays in that position

        • leftzero@lemmynsfw.com
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          5 months ago

          Luckily I’m not American, but I’ve never seen one of these contraptions that didn’t spin freely (and most of the ones I’ve seen spin freely and dangle all over the place, since the cap is tethered to the ring with a flexible strip of plastic).

          It’s a weight attached to a ring placed around a cylinder, after all. It’s bound to spin freely, it’s inherent to the design.

          • breadsmasher@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            The ones I am talking about don’t move under their own weight and gravity. If you held it with the cap upwards, it doesn’t rotate downwards unless you do it yourself

            hence why getting hit in the face and struggling with a little cap is so puzzling to me

      • entropicdrift@lemmy.sdf.org
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        5 months ago

        Y’know how you hold the bottle with your hand to lift it? Believe it or not, you can hold it by the neck, and even slightly touching the little plastic ring the cap is tethered to will keep it from spinning.

        • leftzero@lemmynsfw.com
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          5 months ago

          Y’know that physics principle called the lever principle, or principle of moment…?

          Thing is, if you grab a bottle by the neck and try to tilt it, you have to deal with the whole momentum / mass of the bottle, which is a significant amount of torque on your wrist, especially if you’re awkwardly trying to hold a cap that’s clearly not designed to be held this way at the same time.

          If you instead violently rip the cap out in an entirely justified fit of righteous rage and grab the bottle by it’s center of mass, as normal people do and have done since bottles have existed (well, except for the cap bit; that shit is rather new), you can effortlessly spin it to whatever angle you want, with perfect control all the way.

          Of course you can always hold it with two hands, which might be what you meant, but that’s a rather stupid waste of a free hand when most bottles are designed to be holdable with one single hand.

    • Azzu@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      There literally is no option for it. I can only buy my milk in cartons with this cap on

      • dubyakay@lemmy.ca
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        5 months ago

        I have two alternative options in my immediate neighbourhood in a big city in capitalist-shithole-central and I didn’t even have to try looking.

        • Azzu@lemm.ee
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          5 months ago

          Big city, nice. I live in a small town. Could drive 30km to somewhere else, which I’m sure will not offset any savings xD

      • cows_are_underrated@feddit.org
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        5 months ago

        You can go to your local farmer. They usually don’t bother selling you some milk. Bring your own bottle for them to fill it up. Also, its usually much cheaper than everything you can buy elsewhere. If you want to be sure you don’t get sick you can cook the milk(but this causes a loss in taste), but you can also drink it without cooling it. You might get sick the first (few) times, but you will get used to it and won’t get sick from drinking raw milk.

        • Possibly linux@lemmy.zip
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          5 months ago

          Plant milk is pure sugar which is worse than cow milk that is half sugar. Better to just avoid consuming lots of it.

          • iiGxC@slrpnk.net
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            5 months ago

            What are you talking about? Off the top of my head, unsweetened soy milk and unsweetened ripple (pea milk) have no or low sugar, and are high protein

      • Possibly linux@lemmy.zip
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        5 months ago

        That’s fine in some places. However, a lot of the US has contaminated drinking water due to lead mines. They mines are long closed but lead is everywhere. I don’t have to worry but I know people who have had there entire yards replaced due to lead.

    • Aux@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Plastic is better for the environment than everything else.

  • Shimitar@feddit.it
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    5 months ago

    I honestly like them. Those that “stay open”, of course… They just stay out of the way, never get lost, and works pretty nice.

    At first I disliked them, but quickly found out they are actually… Very practical. Even not considering the “green” twist, why didn’t we adopted them before?

    • Noodle07@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      As an idiot who couldn’t remember where the fuck I put down the cap 5sec ago I really like them

  • brap@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    I don’t buy bottles any more because of it so I guess it’s worked better than expected.

  • qevlarr@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    The bottle cap folds out of the way. If you have it “in your face”, it sounds like a skill issue

  • brlemworld@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    They should make it so the cap doesn’t come off at all, so you have to buy a glass bottle with a metal cap that are both recyclable and won’t give you erectile disfunction.

    • Possibly linux@lemmy.zip
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      5 months ago

      I’ve scene water been titles that were made of the same materials as a soda can. The lid was even threaded so you could reseal it.

  • hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    Guess I’ve gotten used to them. At the beginning I’d just rip the cap off anyways, but now somehow managing though I do buy this sorta bottles rather rarely nowadays.

    ANYWAYS I don’t understand why so many products come in plastic bottles, or carton box with a fucking plastic cap. Aluminum cans are great, cartons are great, glass bottles are great. Why plastic???

    • Vinny_93@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      I’ve also just given in but I gotta say: what the heck is wrong with people that they can recycle the bottles but somehow throw the caps anywhere in nature? How long do you leave your brain in the microwave each day before that behaviour becomes normal? People suck.

      • barsoap@lemm.ee
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        5 months ago

        The whole thing is about bottle caps found on beaches. I assume people just lose track of them, you might put it down on your beach towel and then something moves and a second later it’s in the sand getting buried.

  • morgunkorn@discuss.tchncs.de
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    5 months ago

    They’re also in Germany now, as mandated in every EU country, but I don’t have to deal with them because there’s also a heavy culture of reusable glass bottles (Mehrweg Flaschen) distributed in standard reusable crates. Everything has a deposit so you always bring them back when refilling.

    I don’t mind them either but get yourself cheap cable pliers and cut the tether when you need to, or pour into a cup instead of drinking from the bottle.

  • WIZARD POPE💫@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Just repeating my comment from the same topic a while back.

    So okay the bottle ones like this are fine

    It is these fuckers I have an issue with

    I swear if I ever see the person who designed the new milk cap I will make them choke on a fucking tetrapak.

  • countstex
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    5 months ago

    Perhaps becuase you’ve only opened it half way, you need to lift it back over again and clip in under the rim.

    • 6mementomori@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      this is not doable with all caps and even with those designed to do this it doesn’t work sometimes :(

      • countstex
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        5 months ago

        Maybe they make them better here in Denmark. Plus we have “Pant” where you pay more for the bottles but get money back when you return them so it’s a “belt and braces” approach I guess!

        • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          5 months ago

          Your pant is actually a deposit.
          And we have it in Germany as well called “Pfand”.

          Last time I bought something in such a bottle it was atrocious and stabbed me.

          • countstex
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            5 months ago

            True, true it is just a deposit, but it certainly helps. Compared to England where I lived until I was 38 there are far fewer bottles littering the streets here in Denmark, although a lot of that can be put down to general public attitude probably. Never had a bottle stab me! Sounds like a case of bad quality control.

          • countstex
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            5 months ago

            Normally one or the other is enough. Wearing both is 'more than needed" but does work as a safety net. :)

            • countstex
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              5 months ago

              Oh wait… PANT & pants… So was being a bit slow! 😂