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RecluseRamble@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

It doesn’t work that way.

The bottle itself is usually made of PET which is very recyclable. The cap is made of polypropylene for its strength to prevent the bottle from leaking.

You cannot recycle PET and PP together - you need pure resin for production. So this captive closure actually hinders recycling.

Personally, I’ve never seen many caps lying around without their bottle and think the EU solved a non-existent issue.

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Randelung@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
That’s what I thought, too. I’m sure it’s a problem SOMEWHERE, but did we just get slapped with a global solution to a locally inexistent issue?

I’ve heard that there’s a measurable effect, though, even in Europe, so I guess it’s okay. The extent of that effect? Probably comparable to non-plastic straws. Meaning almost none, just political.

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barsoap@lemm.ee ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I’m not sure how they’re doing it but in Germany all those PET bottles go into a centrally-managed recycling stream (because 25ct deposit) and I bet they have some technical norms around that kind of stuff. The bottles are all crushed to save space, incl. the caps, which at least in the case of the water bottle next to me is HDPE. Judging by the haptics the label is PET, a flimsy banderole glued (fused?) on at the seam.

Either they’re doing it chemically by breaking up the PET and then fishing out the rest from the soup (is that possible?) or what would also work I guess is shredding and mechanical sorting – the label is flimsy, the bottle always transparent, the cap never transparent. Such stuff.

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thejml@lemm.ee ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Right, the previous place required them to be removed because they’re different plastics. I assume the new one just automatically cuts the top of the bottle off and discards it… probably because the people using the service couldn’t be counted on to follow directions anyway. In fact that was the reason they actually gave up on city wide recycling. Too many people trying to throw non-recyclable items in the bin (like whole ladders and baby seats and greasy pizza boxes and all sorts of stuff.) They had a line literally catch fire because someone threw a lithium ion battery in the bin.

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