It may seem weird to you, but we need to develop good regulations to deal with all the negative externalities.
For instance, I think could have also added a recycling fee per plastic item sold (say 5 cents). This would have made it more economical to sell bigger units and avoid technically unnecessary items such as the tear-off rings on bottles.
But the paper straw legislation was botched by allowing forever chemicals.
Aren't they a tamper-proofing mechanism?
Is just a minor adjustments for the industry, isn't like your mom and pop store is making handmade plastic bottles
Really , i fail to see the problem behind just "ahaha, stupid eu regulations"
""" The EU states, “beverage containers that are single-use plastic products should only be allowed to be placed on the market if they fulfil specific product design requirements that significantly reduce the dispersal into the environment of beverage container caps and lids made of plastic.” Article 6 of the directive gives a more detailed insight. According to this article, caps and lids made out of plastic may be placed on the market only if the caps and lids remain attached to the containers during the products’ intended use stage. Tethered caps will become mandatory in the EU in July 2024. """
Why is this a thing? Because plastic lids are made of a harder plastic that doesn't degrade as quickly and is much less recycled than the bottles themselves. How prevalent is this? In the last 30 years 20 million bottle caps have been found on beaches alone in Europe during clean-up work. They are in the top 5 ocean trash items that ultimately kill wildlife. This is only a small snapshot of the ultimate number of bottle caps not recycled aside their bottles.
To fix this, the EU suggest tethering the lid to the bottle so they're less easily lost and more likely to be recycled properly. 20 companies are responsible for the majority of throwaway plastics in the world, so this change is required in only a few places but could have a large net-benefit. Ultimately this is something that can only come from top-down optimization - why? Because it increases costs for each bottle.
> This new bottle cap design requirement must have created a new economy for producing these bottle caps for all of the containers, someone profited.
Companies lost money from this and tried to lobby to avoid it by trying ideas first, and then tethering if those failed.
> There are massive problems around waste that no one there dares to approach, so they make these weird directives that just smell of corruption and incompetence.
Why can't we tackle the small and the large?
> Many cities, to avoid fines, provide separate containers, but in the end just throw everything on the same pile.
Depends on the city/country, but the primary issue with lids is wildlife harm in my opinion so this does fix that issue.
The first thing to note that it was not a "redesign of the bottle cap" directive, that's just how you're spinning it to make it sound ridiculous. Instead it was just a minor part of the Single-Use Plastics Directive.
Second, it doesn't look like the primary purpose of that directive was to increase recycling, but to reduce marine litter. The product groups that were in scope for the directive were chosen based on being the cause of the majority of marine plastic litter.
For a lot of the product groups, they just banned the use of plastics entirely because there were viable sustainable alternatives. Bottle caps aren't being arbitrarily picked on here, it just appears that beverage bottles + caps are the one thing with no good alternative.
The directive did indeed set up goals for separate collection, you're right about that part. But it also set up requirements for the recycling, unlike what you claim.
Does the micro-optimization make sense? Think of how many plastic bottles must be sold in the EU each year. I couldn't find numbers quickly, but I would bet it's on the order of magnitude of 100 billion. Even the tiniest bit of optimization in something so common will pay of really quickly.
None of this seems particularly off. It's legislation addressing a specific concrete problem with solutions that seem pretty proportionate and actually solving the problem they set out to solve.
Tourists in Croatia do not bother collecting the 7 cent tax on plastic containers. Having a different bottle cap won’t improve that.
A small percentage of collected plastic waste is recycled.
All of the infrastructure that will never be built requires public funding and is more expensive than just switching to glass. Do we want to solve the marine waste problem or do we just want to spend money every year to try to avoid it?
The paper straws with forever chemicals is a side effect of this single use plastic directive. How was this not predicted?
The tethered bottle cap is not supposed to solve the problem of making people recycle the bottles, other parts of the directive do that. It solves the problem of the bottle being separated from the cap, such that if the bottle gets recycled so does that cap. Or if the bottle gets thrown in the trash, so does the cap.
I am aware that bottle cap redesign was part of a bigger directive. I am aware of that directive because we are already in the polluting paper straw world.
Fishing gear proposal shows the same half-assed attempt at waste collection as is separating plastic, paper and rest. But that is less weird to me, because I know that already a bigger attempt at managing waste is failing in most cities (but is at least a cosmetic improvement). 50% recollection of fishing gear and a 15% recycling effort will be met with similar gymnastics as waste separation and will result in no fines at all.
How did this micro optimization make sense? How can we take people that pushed for it seriously?
They made regulations on separating waste that did not put a requirement on recycling. Many cities, to avoid fines, provide separate containers, but in the end just throw everything on the same pile.
This new bottle cap design requirement must have created a new economy for producing these bottle caps for all of the containers, someone profited but realistically the need for it was invented in EU institutions.
There are massive problems around waste that no one there dares to approach, so they make these weird directives that just smell of corruption and incompetence.