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0 pointsffgjgf11y ago0 comments

How exactly do bottle caps in the EU end up in marine environments? And if they do that should be pretty easy to fix.

These regulations won’t do anything to stop countries in Asia, Africa and other places from pumping their garbage into rivers and oceans…

To be fair I don’t really mind the bottle caps (unlike the plastic straw ban) but it hardly accomplishes anything beautiful allowing people in the EU to feel better about themselves because they are doing their part (which is possibly actually counterproductive).

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sunbum1y ago

But they are, as it becomes easier to just produce one version the bottle caps attached to the bottle will spread to other countries[1]

[1]- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brussels_effect

rvnx1y ago

The solution was an EU-wide plastic bottle deposit, this way, it pushes people to bring back intact bottles with their caps and get ~0.10 EUR back for each.

And if you are too lazy to bring it back or just a person who throws away stuff carelessly, someone else will do (big sorting centers as it's a big revenue-stream, the cleaners, the homelesses, some bored students, etc).

vidarh1y ago

I'm all for requiring bottle deposit/returns schemes. I loved the Norwegian one for example, but if you require the return of both or nothing, you will likely end up with a net reduction in returned plastic. If you were to reward returns separately, maybe. But even then you'd be more likely to ensure caps don't get lost if they stay attached.

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