Plastic Bottles Holding 2.3 Litres Are Least Harmful To the Planet (newscientist.com) 184
Using plastic bottles that contain the most liquid for the lowest packaging weight could help reduce plastic waste. From a report: Plastic pollution is a huge problem for the world, with much plastic waste reaching the oceans where it can affect marine life. In recognition of this, many researchers are developing strategies to tackle the plastic waste problem. Now, Rafael Becerril-Arreola at the University of South Carolina and his colleagues have come up with a relatively simple method to make a difference: change the packaging size to maximise its capacity for a given weight of plastic. "We realised we could establish a relationship between supermarket beverage sales and plastic waste," says Becerril-Arreola. "I saw the opportunity to create an impact, and I took it."
Becerril-Arreola and his team focused on polyethylene terephthalate (PET), the most common material in plastic bottles. They weighed 187 empty bottles of different sizes from bestselling drink brands to determine the weight of plastic required to produce a bottle of a given capacity. They also compared this against PET waste and drink sales in Minnesota between 2009 and 2013, as the state government there reliably collects waste statistics and its bottled drink consumption is close to the US national average. The researchers found that the most efficient bottles -- those with the greatest capacity relative to the weight of plastic used to make the bottle -- had a volume between 0.5 and 2.9 litres. Bottles of this size are typically bought for on-the-go use or social gatherings. Bottles that were smaller (under 0.4 litres) or larger (over 3 litres) used more plastic in relation to each bottle's capacity.
Becerril-Arreola and his team focused on polyethylene terephthalate (PET), the most common material in plastic bottles. They weighed 187 empty bottles of different sizes from bestselling drink brands to determine the weight of plastic required to produce a bottle of a given capacity. They also compared this against PET waste and drink sales in Minnesota between 2009 and 2013, as the state government there reliably collects waste statistics and its bottled drink consumption is close to the US national average. The researchers found that the most efficient bottles -- those with the greatest capacity relative to the weight of plastic used to make the bottle -- had a volume between 0.5 and 2.9 litres. Bottles of this size are typically bought for on-the-go use or social gatherings. Bottles that were smaller (under 0.4 litres) or larger (over 3 litres) used more plastic in relation to each bottle's capacity.
Surprise, that's my preferred beer container size (Score:4, Funny)
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Every time someone says "I'm doing my part", I always think of this scene [imgflip.com] (SFW).
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What movie is that.
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It's simply one of the best movie ever made! (if you understand what you're watching) [theatlantic.com]
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Wow, it's just like Ender's Game.
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Wow, it's just like Ender's Game.
Very similar: they're both awful movies based on fantastic books made by people who completely didn't get what the book was about.
Or... (Score:5, Insightful)
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We already know large swaths of the human populace won't abandon plastic (and won't recycle the plastic they do use), so rather than rail against the machine, this idea at least helps reduce the waste. It is something we might be able to get manufacturers to buy into.
Re:Or... (Score:4, Interesting)
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The drawback with glass is all the people who consider their car's side window to be the garbage can. I'm somewhat rural and walk the mile and a half to the mailbox often, the amount of garbage that can appear on the side of the road almost daily is way too much, beer cans, coffee cups, juice boxes etc. Broken glass is the shits, especially at the local swimming hole.
Re:Or... (Score:5, Insightful)
So let's just actually enforce those "$1000 minimum fine for littering" signs that are posted along all the freeways. Or even better yet, go full-Singapore on their asses. This is a solved problem in many other countries as well. You'll hardly see any litter when walking through Tokyo, Seoul, or Taipei either, for example. We just need to acknowledge that the US doesn't have, or have to have, every idea and solution ourselves. And there's no shame in seeing how another country fixes a problem and copying their solution.
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Be nice, but there are a lot of rural roads to patrol here in Canada.
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So let's just actually enforce those "$1000 minimum fine for littering" signs that are posted along all the freeways. Or even better yet, go full-Singapore on their asses. This is a solved problem in many other countries as well. You'll hardly see any litter when walking through Tokyo, Seoul, or Taipei either, for example.
I suspect this has more to do with the culture than the fines. And good luck trying to enforce it.
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We already know large swaths of the human populace won't abandon plastic (and won't recycle the plastic they do use), so rather than rail against the machine, this idea at least helps reduce the waste. It is something we might be able to get manufacturers to buy into.
To focus on your parenthetical point, for the most part, plastic "recycling" has always been a große Lüge [npr.org] perpetuated by the oil companies to make themselves look better, so is it really that the people won't or that the recycling centers don't?
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Plastic is at least potentially recyclable. What no one talks about is how juice boxes are destroying the world.
glass? (Score:3)
I mean it is heavy and all but 100% recyclable, so why not use glass if it is actually that important? Also, seems like there are other good choices , maybe corn based bio-degradable plastic?
Second what percentage of plastic pollutants are actually bottles. I'd think candy wrappers, food wrappers.. straws all probably contributes as much or more, so many more sources. How much would this change actually mean.
3rd, seems like a lot of waste for all the people who open 2.3 liters of soda and then it goes flat because they don't drink it fast enough .. all that has cost too.
I think the bottles are probably the size they are because of the needs of the people buying the products.
Re:glass? (Score:5, Insightful)
The entire reason we have these environmental issues is that the costs can be easily externalized by the people making the money. The only way around that is with Government laws, but the people making all that money take a bit of it and spend it on buying off politicians and running propaganda on TV networks.
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That doesn't happen much at the EU level. In fact the EU often creates rules that prevent state governments from doing it.
I guess I'm saying it's possible to design a system that is resistant to that kind of tampering.
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Cost. The entire reason we have these environmental issues is that the costs can be easily externalized by the people making the money. The only way around that is with Government laws, but the people making all that money take a bit of it and spend it on buying off politicians and running propaganda on TV networks.
Yes, we do understand how The Swamp works.
The way this works going forward, is by taxing the living shit out of plastic. Cost of glass, can be justified. Easily. You just have to find governments who care more about the planet and our future, then catering to Greed.
Raise the price of gas to $20/gallon, and you suddenly find a lot more human-powered transportation. Cost matters.
Re:glass? (Score:5, Informative)
Glass is HEAVY compared to plastic. That means more fuel burned to move it around. Then you increase the fuel taxes, so sugar water prices have to increase significantly to compensate for it. Sure, at some point demand will go down as a result, but the companies aren't going to eat more of the cost than they must to make sales. We could push fountain drinks more, but the cups/lids/straws, even the paper based ones, can be problematic on the recycling front. The paper based stuff at least breaks down reasonably in landfill.
Plastic wouldn't be bad overall if we required recycling in country with pollution controls. There seems to be little interest in it though. Perhaps the old bottle deposit system could help here?
For moving humans around, those human powered transportation options are useful enough. So long as you have at least reasonable weather to work with, timing works, you don't have cyclists getting hit all the time, etc.. For moving large amounts of cargo around? Not going to happen. It would help incentivize electric vehicles I suppose. Which helps some, more if you also keep pushing cleaner energy options.
Then you have to consider government mixed messages. In my home state, they almost passed another tax increase on efficient vehicles (PHEV and EV). They added one last year, and wanted to add another one this year. Total would have been over $600/year. To make them "pay their fair share" of road maintenance. Never mind that the first tax covered estimated wear for more than the average miles per year for them. And we have very bad air quality here. Granted, it's growing, but this is over around 2% of vehicles at the moment.
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Raise the price of gas, plastics, etc too much, and next election the anti-tax party gets elected, the same party that believes the market works best with no regulations.
Watching the Federal carbon tax play out here in Canada, the right wing Provinces freaked, another tax, even with most all the money returned to the people.
Yet years back the right was pushing carbon taxes as a market solution and my Province's right wing government, back a few years implemented a revenue neutral carbon tax.
It's a problem w
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Raise the price of gas to $20/gallon, and you suddenly find the cost of food goes way up. Because farmers don't use an old plow horse to do what they do.
And moving food from Iowa to New York costs money. And it'll cost more if the price of fuel is 8-10x current prices....
Re:glass? (Score:4, Informative)
Don't laugh. Maryland did exactly this, and even got it listed as "Renewable" tier.
How a trash incinerator — Baltimore's biggest polluter — became 'green' energy [baltimoresun.com]
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Most incinerators burn hot enough that nasty stuff like PET plastic smoke is actually mostly consumed, as well.
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The only way around that is with Government laws
From the Department of: "We Must Do Something! This is SOMETHING! Therefore We Must Do It!"
Ah, you must be the representative from the Department of : "I don't care who it hurts. As long as I am profiting from it we must change nothing!!!"
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What precisely you choose to do makes a difference.
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seems like a lot of waste for all the people who open 2.3 liters of soda and then it goes flat
I expect the soda companies to lobby for this because it will increase revenue and profit. People who drink only 0.5 liters at a go will be buying roughly 4x more product than before.
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Or it will increase sales of SodaStream and similar gadgets, in which case it's an even bigger win for the environment.
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Maybe if I could easily get tank refills at a reasonable price...
SodaStream CO2 is a giant ripoff... You can bypass it by using paintball tanks with an adapter, but finding a source for refill can be a pain. I got them filled at Sports Authority for a while (at like $2 for 20oz tank refill - 10 cents/oz vs $1/oz for a SodaStream refill) , but then they closed and there's no longer a place within a reasonable distance that will fill them for me...
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3rd, seems like a lot of waste for all the people who open 2.3 liters of soda and then it goes flat because they don't drink it fast enough .. all that has cost too.
This. It's hard to go through a 2-liter bottle without it going flat. You have to have at least two people actively drinking it for every meal, or else you waste a third of it. With a 2.3-liter bottle, you'd waste closer to half the contents.
So the question is whether they took into account that for an average person, a 2.3-liter bottle contains considerably less drinkable liquid than two 1-liter bottles, and adjusted the consumption rate proportionally.
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I mean it is heavy and all but 100% recyclable, so why not use glass if it is actually that important?
Then you get broken glass in every parking lot.
Re:glass? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, that will annoy people even more in the beginning, because it means an offset in the purchase price making everything more expensive, but here in Germany it has worked wonders in keeping the littering through bottles and cans at a minimum.
Even if you have people who don't care and still throw their containers away, a deposit-refund system turns plenty of other people into garbage collectors that pick up containers for the deposit.
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We have one here, but it was set in the 80s and since then inflation has been high enough that now the deposit isn't worth much. Even if you give a bag of cans to a homeless person, they won't take it.
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I lived in Michigan when they instituted the 10 cent bottle/can deposit, and overnight a huge proportion of roadside trash disappeared. Interestingly not only cans and bottles but also McDonalds bags and that stuff as well. My guess is that if someone has half a dozen empty beer cans in the back seat already they're more likely to toss the rest of the junk there as well rather than go to the trouble of opening the window to toss it.
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there has GOT to be a third alternative. Maybe something made with biodegradable plastic? because your right, paper straws are all but useless.
how about hollowed baboo straws. Those bio degrade and grow fast.
Hey there it is! (Score:2)
I was wondering what the stupidest, least useful thing I would read all day - there it is!
The "best" container size is irrelevant if you are already recycling your used containers...
Personally I have re-used some plastic water bottles hundreds of times, because they were a size (much smaller than 2.3 liters) that worked well for a constant use I had. The rest get recycled. So that size was the "best" one.
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The "best" container size is irrelevant if you are already recycling your used containers...
I keep hearing how recycled plastic is almost useless and most of it ends up being turned into park benches or discarded. So I don't bother recycling plastic anymore. I save the space in my green bin for glass, metal cans, and paper. I also throw in scrap metal and car parts, which the recycler said they can handle when I asked them.
What I'd like to know is, after I toss my plastic straw or bottle in the trash and it gets collected and buried in the county landfill, how does it then end up in the ocean?
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What I'd like to know is, after I toss my plastic straw or bottle in the trash and it gets collected and buried in the county landfill, how does it then end up in the ocean?
It doesn't, of course. The bulk of the plastic that ends up in the oceans are coming from rivers in Asia or Africa, where they apparently just dump their trash in the river en masse.
https://www.scientificamerican... [scientificamerican.com]
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It doesn't, of course. The bulk of the plastic that ends up in the oceans are coming from rivers in Asia or Africa, where they apparently just dump their trash in the river en masse.
Yet the rest of us now have to use paper straws.
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Australia seems to deal with it.
https://youtu.be/MTgentcfzgg [youtu.be]
There's also making fuel out of it.
https://youtu.be/TFuTCpCVSbM [youtu.be]
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Scotland is introducing a deposit-return scheme [zerowastescotland.org.uk] next year for this - pay a bit extra for the bottle, get your deposit back when returned. Incentivised recycling.
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We've had deposit-return schemes for glass, aluminium and plastic bottles in Canada for a few decades now. No idea if it works well or not, but most grocery stores have machines where you can drop your empty aluminium cans and plastic bottles to get your money back.
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That's probably because your state set the deposit price too low. At 10 cents each (the highest in the US) the system in Michigan worked pretty well. Oregon's 5 cent deposit didn't seem to be worth bothering with for most people (and Michigan's probably needs to rise to 15 or 20 now because of inflation).
Re: Hey there it is! (Score:3)
TL;DR: Works very well im Germany.
Glass, 0.5L, 7ct
Glass, 0.7-1L, 15ct
Plastic, re-usable, 15ct
Plastic, single-use, 25ct
Cans, 25ct
People are too greed to leave 25ct lying around. That's a bread roll or a big bottle of lemonade right there! 4 of them and you got an Euro! A buddy of mine was stacking them behind his kitchem door, "for bad times" (aka laziness). When they hit the roof, he brought them back, and I think he got 100 or 400 EUR back (cant remember which)!
It even sparked the situation that poor peopl
Re:Hey there it is! (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, the deposit should be so high that 95% of people would return it to get their money back, and the remaining 5% of bottles would get picked up by others to get free money back.
Let's see how many assholes would still throw their plastic bottles away if they paid one dollar per bottle.
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I was about to point out similar in reply to your other comment. Here in BC, they actually dropped the deposit price on bigger bottles recently, stupid. Ten cents a bottle is just not worth it for most people. When I was a kid, it went up to 10 cents and you could actually, for a short while, buy a chocolate bar for a dime.
Another advantage is it gives work to the homeless, but once again the deposit should be enough to motivate more people to pick up the bottles.
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pay a bit extra for the bottle, get your deposit back when returned. Incentivised recycling.
It's like this in Iowa, USA. There are machines at grocery stores that scan your bottle and give you a receipt at the end that you turn in at the register (I once paid my whole grocery bill from recycled beer cans).
But here's the irritating part. If the bar code on the bottle shows it isn't a participating container or it couldn't be read, it just spits the bottle back to you. It won't take it. So the trash bins near the machines are always stuffed full of bottles and cans that were rejected.
I recycle m
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Here, they have recycling bins for what the machine spits out. 3 or 4 bins side by side and most people will take the 2 seconds to pick the right bin. Unluckily there's still the 10% or so of people who don't even give enough of a shit to pick the right bin or worse purposely try to sabotage the whole recycling thing.
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In the case I mentioned, there was no alternative other than throwing the rejected item into the garbage bin.
Fortunately where I live now, I can just dump all the cans into the can bin all at once without having to feed them one at a fucking time into a machine that rejects half of them.
55 gallon drum (Score:2)
It uses very little plastic for the amount it holds and it's reusable. Image going to the grocery store with your drum caddie and rolling away with a hundred pounds of chicken noodle soup.
Another and more practical way to be environmentally more friendly is to not buy containers of liquid (I'm assuming predominately soda and water). You generally don't need water in a disposable package, and you don't need soda at all. For milk, anyone that has spent time in Ontario knows that milk comes in a bag and your g
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In Québec too AFAIK, but then again I've been lactose intolerant (you insensitive clod!) for over a decade so maybe we don't have that anymore over here.
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For some reason I had "pint is a pound the world around" in my head, but I ignored that we were talking about gallons which have 8 pints (for some definition of gallon and pint).
The problem with the imperial system is that the US doesn't use it, it has another structurally similar but incompatible system. And neither system is really worth the effort to memorize all the conversions.
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Well, considering that a gallon was long ago defined as 10 pounds of water (IIRC at 50F) and having a 160 fl oz's, chicken soup sounds pretty light.
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I can use milk, I'm genetically adapted for it (freak). Not everyone is, but I can gather useful nutrition from it. It ends up being a very inexpensive protein source for me, if you haven't tried it. If you ferment it you can make interesting probiotic-rich food from it that keeps better than raw milk would. A very practical food for those in cold regions that have a short growing season. Many famines were avoided thanks to milk. We know this because the people without the gene failed to survive in those re
2.3l bottle (Score:2, Interesting)
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Depends upon how the bottom of the bottle is tapered. Complex shapes for plastic bottles are done all the time.
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Complex shapes probably negates the optimal plastic-to-volume ratio.
Things *per se* aren't good or bad for the environment. It's how we make them, use them, and dispose of them that matters. Re-use is always the best possible solution from an environmental standpoint, and here glass is the very best material for containers for reusability, as well as being benign in landfills.
PET is one of the most profitably recyclable plastics, and if a PET bottle gets recycled its volumetric material efficiency doesn't
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The convenience of drinking from a bottle in your car outweighs the needs of the planet?
I don't think that's what Spock said.
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Better solution... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Better solution... (Score:4, Informative)
Inefficient use of storage/display space though. More energy needed to transport the same volume of liquid.
Artillery not trucks (Score:5, Funny)
Arrange for delivery by artillery instead of trucks and the spherical shape should not be a problem.
May require some training for consumers to handle these “deliveries”
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Pretty cheap delivery devices available as well...
https://www.amazon.com/300-Yar... [amazon.com]
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You jest. But that is actually done at Galaxy's Edge. The TSA goons even got their panties in a wad over them when people started bringing their empties home as souvenirs; because the caliber of people they hire is such that they didn't understand that thermal detonators are not a real thing, and they had to be overridden by the agency higher-ups.
Sugar! (Score:2)
Two liters of sugar drink will kill you. Diabetes in a bottle.
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Re: Sugar! (Score:4, Funny)
I'm a grumpy old man
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I'm presuming the GP is European, because they seem *very* tuned into certain stereotypical American habits
You are correct but at the same time I saw it daily, so I'm not playing on stereotypes ("all americans are fat and eat ketchup, haha"). And yes, I didn't mention that she was close to spherical. And to quote an american friend: "Red wine is like ketchup, it goes with everything"
Remarkably simple good idea (Score:2)
Ideally we would get people to recycle the plastic, but humans seem to suck at that, and our recycling infrastructure isn't keeping pace with the volume of plastic we generate. So ways to reduce the impact are the next best thing, and this seems like the kind of idea you could get manufacturers to buy into. Nice thinking.
SMH (Score:3)
While applaud the aim of the research, it appears that what these people have discovered is that the surface and volume of a bottle don't scale in a linear fashion.
Paper or Plastic (Score:2)
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There are some alcohol distributors looking at cardboard retail containers coated in a light wax internally to contain the alcohol. While the wax itself doesn't break down it's so much less material than an equivalent plastic bottle it'd be a huge step forward. I don't know why water and soda distributors couldn't do the same.
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You can get wine and milk in a box right now.
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As far as I know, all the wine in a box wines are still the plastic bag.
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Even paper doesn't break down very quick in the anaerobic conditions at the dump.
buy 2L, refill smaller (Score:5, Interesting)
I buy all my pop in 2L bottles. I get them home and refill into either 4 or 6 smaller bottles. This helps with portion control, as well as keeping the fizz. I never have to look my fridge to see a 2L with 3" of pop left in it and think of just how flat that must be by now.
Just reach in and grab a small bottle and go.
I've been reusing the same smaller bottles for over 2 years now. And the 2L go right back to the store and get taken in for recycle.
So, the 3 R's:
- REDUCE: buy in larger sizes like 2L, never 1L , 20oz, or 16oz bottles, never 12oz cans
- REUSE: been using the same smaller containers for years
- RECYCLE: 2L's all go back to the store for recycling
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Or you could stop drinking carbonated drinks. The CO2 acidifies the drink and is bad for your teeth.
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"everything in moderation". My dentist says I have great looking teeth. I brush regularly. Also, if you have pop available in 11oz bottles instead of a 2L, you don't pour a 20oz tumbler and sip on it, you grab a 11oz and drink it in one go and then you're done.
Any dentist will tell you "sipping" is the worst way to drink sugary drinks, it keeps the teeth bathed in sugar over a long period of time.
I'm still a "sipper" though, (at home and at work, I ne
No (Score:4, Insightful)
Just stop using plastic; this is an idiotically short-term sticking plaster.
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That poolwater taste problem can be fixed by going from chlorine to chloramine, which has less odor. Chloramine lasts longer so gives better protection when water needs to travel a long way. The downside is that it's tougher to remove from the water if you need pure water (e.g. for a fish tank).
If your water supplier uses chlorine a simple pitcher filter will fix the taste problem. Municipal tapwater, even if it tastes bad, is most likely safer than bottled water.
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Why not a huge spherical bottle? (Score:3, Informative)
A spherical bottle will have the smallest surface-to-volume ratio of all possible 3 dimensional shapes, so that's obviously the "best" general shape, and the bigger the radius, the better (A/V = 3/r). So the best "plastic bottle" obviously is a 20000km diameter sphere.
The value of Least Harmful..? (Score:5, Funny)
(Lawyer): "I noticed you chose 9mm for your police force, and that is the caliber used at the scene to neutralize the suspect. Any reason you chose not to use a larger caliber?"
(Sherriff) "Yes, we're going with the 'least harmful' approach with the 9mm caliber."
(Lawyer) "Yes, but the suspect is still dead."
(Sheriff) "Hey, I'm just doing my part."
A return to 3 liter bottles? (Score:2)
I could deal with that...
Are we being misdirected ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Instead of the wrapper, consider the contents.
Sugar water is a major cause of human mortality; far more urgent than plastic waste. The vast consumption of carbohydrates by those in industrialized societies is not just killing us but making our short time above ground sick and ugly. And at the moment it may be worth noting that diabetics are 3 times more likely to die from the current virus than non-diabetics. (Oh, you think you aren't diabetic? What's your A1c?) I would especially urge everyone who loves their children not to get them addicted to junk carbs.
Priorities: #1 staying alive and healthy; #2 other stuff, like the environment.
Geometry FTW (Score:2)
duh (Score:2)
Uh. There's a formula for that (Score:2)
The formulas that convert between surface area and inner volume of common geometric shapes are pretty well established, and literally every one of them is bias toward bigger containers offering more "efficient" ratios for inner storage vs material used to create the shell.
Why did they even bother weighing anything at all? Did they suspect that plastic bottle manufacturers weren't already using as little material as possible to maximize their profits?
Fun experiment to prove math still works though. I hope th
Ban plastic drink containers (Score:2)
Ban plastic bottles, and aggressively encourage people to stop guzzling sodapop all the time. Several problems solved all at once.
Bollocks! (Score:2)
My plastic bottles go in the recycle bin.
None goes into the trash or on the ground.
I like and want the 16oz to 24oz plastic bottles.
I don't want all the plastic bottles to be 2.3 litres!
If these do-gooders really want to help, they would make recycling EASIER at every step in the process of making, using, and disposing of plastic goods.
Next, they'll tell that farting is bad for "the planet."
Plant Cellulose (Score:2)
Stop the madness.
Bullshit. GLASS bottles are least harmful. (Score:2)
Oh the convenience!
Come on, if you can't even hold a glass bottle, you should be in a hospital or elderly home! ^^
And for cases of them, there's usually a delivery service. They put them right in your storage, take the old case, everything. Even on the 6th floor with no elevator.
Throwing them on the ground should be a crime (intended assault) though. But modern states usually also clean their sidewalks and the like. I rarely ever see broken glass here in Germany. A blind man could walk barefoot here and be