Thoughts? I am currently trying to avoid using plastic packed drinks as much as possible due to it’s limited and finite recycle count
FYI; cans are plastic lined.
Always. We used steel before then because it wouldn’t react with the drink. We always knew aluminum cans would be cheaper, but couldn’t figure out how to protect the flavor and carbonation until Coors figured out how to line it with plastic. He shared the process for free with his competition because he knew a recycling program would scale really well.
That’s not entirely true. In the early days they used wax to line the cans because steel still leaves a taste in the drink. It just didn’t work very well and also caused carbonation issues as the CO2 diffused into the wax.
It’s true, but the amount of plastic in the cans is pretty negligible, especially compared to plastic bottles and the aluminum can is still by far the most recyclable beverage container.
Also there are new linings that don’t use plastic but natural materials called oleoresinous linings but they’re not good for acidic things so they’re not very wildly used.
Do you remember when Sun Chips changed their chip bag material to a more environmentally friendly compostable material? People lost their minds. Why? Because the bag crinkled a lot. All of the boring late night talk shows made fun of Sun Chips bags. So, they switched it back to the old bags.
Moral of the story is that people don’t care if something is better for the environment if it inconveniences them now. If everything was in cans people would cry because they can’t close them or whatever. In fact, many items that were previously sold in cans are now plastic. Also, money… Cheaper to wrap water in plastic.
You can still buy Coca-cola in glass bottles if you look hard enough. But they are pricey.
I got laughed at on other platforms by older generations for even suggesting the notion of mild inconvenience to make future generations lives easier.
They don’t want us or them to have a better life, not even if it costs them nothing - but ESPECIALLY not if they have to do literally anything differently.
This is where I dispair about the future of walkable cities and trains. Can’t even get a section of the population to accept stopping to charge an EV every two hours for a whole 20 minutes during the road trip they take once a month, if that. How can we convince those people to bike or take trains?
I’ve given up trying to convince them. They’re a vocal minority. Who I talk to and work with are the quieter ones. I’ve found on posts and comment sections there are people who are asking honest questions and are receptive. Scroll past the chaff and you’ll find them. We have a new train opening in our city and I spent a couple hours explaining to people where parking was available, how to ride it, how to pay for fare, etc. People were genuinely excited to hear that people like me are riding it! A lot of it is just anxiety of never taking transit before, and not knowing how to get started.
Do you remember when Sun Chips changed their chip bag material to a more environmentally friendly compostable material? People lost their minds. Why? Because the bag crinkled a lot.
No… Because it crinkled at a high enough volume that you actually have to worry about hearing loss. People weren’t losing their mind for no reason.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703960004575427150103293906
It is louder than “the cockpit of my jet,” said J. Scot Heathman, an Air Force pilot, in a video probing the issue that he posted on his blog under the headline “Potato Chip Technology That Destroys Your Hearing.” Mr. Heathman tested the loudness using a RadioShack sound meter. He squeezed the bag and recorded a 95 decibel level.
The Bag was louder than the ambient noise in a jet fighter cockpit in flight.
Compared to barrels of crude oil, I am sure a SINGLE Block of Aluminium can be reused more than 1000X times with no environment damage.
We don’t have Sun Chips here so I’m not aware of this, but I’d be really curious to learn how much of that freakout was genuine and how much was engineered by entities with a vested interest in maintaining status quo.
Certainly loud, but I think the way forward should have been engineering a quieter version instead of going back to plastic. And in the meantime use idk… a bowl?
Edit: use a bowl, meaning put the crisps in the bowl when you open them if the noise bothers you
At the time, I thought the Sun chips bag situation was hilarious. If I think back on it now, it’s really sad. Yes, the bag was significantly louder than the original bag. But I feel like we’re going to need to make some sacrifices as a society for the environment. And that seems like a really, really tiny sacrifice.
If you can, get Coca-Cola from Mexico. Its all glass and uses cane sugar.
Not that it isn’t still junk food and horrible for you. HFCS might be a worse form of sugar, but in the end they’re still refined sugars. It’s worth noting that Mexico and the US have similar obesity rates. There are more factors than just beverages involved, but it is one.
Moral of the story is that people don’t care if something is better for the environment if it inconveniences them now
Another way to put this is we all live in many different environments, including our clothes, room, home, neighborhood, etc
I would water the number one reason for not wanting the crinkle bags is to permit quiet night time snacking so as not to wake others in the house.
One important thing to keep in mind that is that you cannot “just” make things from aluminium.
One reason the beverage can gets away with using so little alu for so much content is that that it’s pressurized and hence held in shape by its very content. This is why flat drinks have to have the extra air inside it be overpressurized and hence will stil fizz briefly when opened. And the shape of a bottle is not good for being held up by uniform pressure.
We can put non-pressurized things into it when either the content is light (cremes etc) or is in itself rather stable (powders). But even then we use a lot of metal for the container. To truly save, it needs to be something that pressurizes from the inside, which among other things can be inherently unsafe (spray cans come to mind, don’t puncture them).
Aren’t aluminum cans still plastic bottles on the inside?
A standalone plastic bottle is 20-40g of PET.
The lining of a soda can is about 1g of BPA.
Yeah, but it is a lining. The entire interior surface is plastic, so is the risk of chemical leeching any different?
Isn’t “BPA-free” a selling point for food-safe plastic because BPA is bad?
They have plastic coating, yes, but way less plastic and way easier to just burn it off in the crucible.
That’s like saying cars and trucks are made of paint because they have a layer of it on the outside.
Can liners are both an extremely small portion of the overall container as well as being absolutely essential for most canned beverages.
Additionally, many/most manufacturers have or are moving away from liner materials that contain BPA.
You mean, if it gets recycled.
Right, 90%-ish of it never gets recycled at all, and the stuff that does can only go through the process a handful of times before it’s unusable.
EDIT: dude was talking about plastic recycling, i misunderstood the context
Original comment:
🧢
50% of beer and soda cans are recycled
And,
Why post blatantly false, easily invalidated information?
Me, and I’m pretty sure the guy I was replying to, were both talking about plastic recycling, not aluminum recycling, replying to OP statement: I am currently trying to avoid using plastic packed drinks as much as possible due to it’s limited and finite recycle count.
Sorry, I thought that was clear from the context.
