I know they’re supposed to be good for the environment. But… Holy smokes they drive me up the wall. They really do!
I had no trouble adapting when aluminum can pull-tabs got replaced by push-tabs, because it was pretty much the same movement, and I could see the immediate advantage of not getting cut by a pull-tab.
But the tethered cap is fighting decades of muscle memory in me: I’m used to taking the cap off with one hand and keeping it there while taking a swig with the other. Now I unscrew the cap with one hand, but I still have to hold the cap so it’s out of the way. It feels like drinking in handcuffs each and every time…
So unlike the pull-tab, the tethered plastic bottle cap is one of those compulsory eco solutions that constantly make you feel ever-so-slightly more miserable all the time, and I hate that because ecology only works when it brings something of value both to people and to the environment.
The EU took an inventory of what kind of plastic ends up on beaches, bottle caps weren’t the #1 offender but bottles were much rarer so it stands to reason that when you attach the caps to the bottles you get rid of a lot of plastics on beaches.
Wait, the rings of plastic bottle caps were also among the top ten? Who takes the time to pry off the ring and why would they do this to begin with? This feels like there‘s still a piece missing.
Here’s the actual report, the answer is that they didn’t distinguish between caps and rings in the statistics. Most of the top 10 place of that category should come from caps, not rings.
As to who pries them off: Bored people.