Always. We used steel before then because it wouldn't react with the drink. We always knew aluminum cans would be cheaper, but couldn't figure out how to protect the flavor and carbonation until Coors figured out how to line it with plastic. He shared the process for free with his competition because he knew a recycling program would scale really well.
Do you remember when Sun Chips changed their chip bag material to a more environmentally friendly compostable material? People lost their minds. Why? Because the bag crinkled a lot. All of the boring late night talk shows made fun of Sun Chips bags. So, they switched it back to the old bags.
Moral of the story is that people don't care if something is better for the environment if it inconveniences them now. If everything was in cans people would cry because they can't close them or whatever. In fact, many items that were previously sold in cans are now plastic. Also, money... Cheaper to wrap water in plastic.
You can still buy Coca-cola in glass bottles if you look hard enough. But they are pricey.
I got laughed at on other platforms by older generations for even suggesting the notion of mild inconvenience to make future generations lives easier.
They don't want us or them to have a better life, not even if it costs them nothing - but ESPECIALLY not if they have to do literally anything differently.
This is where I dispair about the future of walkable cities and trains. Can't even get a section of the population to accept stopping to charge an EV every two hours for a whole 20 minutes during the road trip they take once a month, if that. How can we convince those people to bike or take trains?
Do you remember when Sun Chips changed their chip bag material to a more environmentally friendly compostable material? People lost their minds. Why? Because the bag crinkled a lot.
No... Because it crinkled at a high enough volume that you actually have to worry about hearing loss. People weren't losing their mind for no reason.
It is louder than "the cockpit of my jet," said J. Scot Heathman, an Air Force pilot, in a video probing the issue that he posted on his blog under the headline "Potato Chip Technology That Destroys Your Hearing." Mr. Heathman tested the loudness using a RadioShack sound meter. He squeezed the bag and recorded a 95 decibel level.
The Bag was louder than the ambient noise in a jet fighter cockpit in flight.
We don't have Sun Chips here so I'm not aware of this, but I'd be really curious to learn how much of that freakout was genuine and how much was engineered by entities with a vested interest in maintaining status quo.
Certainly loud, but I think the way forward should have been engineering a quieter version instead of going back to plastic. And in the meantime use idk... a bowl?
Edit: use a bowl, meaning put the crisps in the bowl when you open them if the noise bothers you
At the time, I thought the Sun chips bag situation was hilarious. If I think back on it now, it's really sad. Yes, the bag was significantly louder than the original bag. But I feel like we're going to need to make some sacrifices as a society for the environment. And that seems like a really, really tiny sacrifice.
Not that it isn't still junk food and horrible for you. HFCS might be a worse form of sugar, but in the end they're still refined sugars. It's worth noting that Mexico and the US have similar obesity rates. There are more factors than just beverages involved, but it is one.
One important thing to keep in mind that is that you cannot "just" make things from aluminium.
One reason the beverage can gets away with using so little alu for so much content is that that it's pressurized and hence held in shape by its very content. This is why flat drinks have to have the extra air inside it be overpressurized and hence will stil fizz briefly when opened. And the shape of a bottle is not good for being held up by uniform pressure.
We can put non-pressurized things into it when either the content is light (cremes etc) or is in itself rather stable (powders). But even then we use a lot of metal for the container. To truly save, it needs to be something that pressurizes from the inside, which among other things can be inherently unsafe (spray cans come to mind, don't puncture them).
Oh yeah let me just whip out my interdimensional crucible and burn off the plastic between the liquid and the metal so I can drink my beverage in peace.
I buy distilled water for my daughter's baby formula bottles. They all come in plastic jugs and I really wish I could just bring a glass jar somewhere to get it refilled. Because I just know all that plastic is leeching into the water.
It's a shame that glass jars are so uncommon around here. The plastic is so wasteful.
We have a water company here that sells water in cans called Liquid Death, I don't know if they are international or not.
We also have beer companies that use aluminum bottles over cans, might just be Bud Light and Coors but I dont drink cheap pilsners.
We don't recycle enough and don't have the capacity for processing if we did recycle enough. There is no real financial incentive for companies to spend more on aluminum bottles vs cans or plastic. Aluminum bottles have a plastic liner because drinking out of raw aluminum tastes bad and might contribute to Alzheimer's(might not be true).
I want us to go back to glass bottles but we stopped using them so much because we are terrible people and leave broken glass everywhere and plastic is better for shareholders. Seriously, we we were using glass the amount of broken glass shards in parks, streets, sidewalks, parking lots was a problem when I was a kid.
Money. Plastic is so integrated into the supply chain that divesting from it would require retooling probably thousands of bottling plants, at significant expense, with no guarantee of ROI.
Increase the costs by adding taxes to the plastic that account. Sucks to use the stick instead of the carrot, but if it’s a real societal cost then the cost should be paid by those introducing it. They’d raise prices for these goods and consumers can decide if it’s still worth buying.
Then give a loan to a worker co-op that would like to take over and force THAT sale to happen. That way the everything is equally shared amongst the workers, diffusing the wealth and power into the working class.
Not the vast majority going to some billionaires looking to undermine the very nation they were founded.
My thought is that it’s incredible how enormous the packaged drink market is. Tap water + filter + insulated bottle. Profit.
I understand that not everyone has the luxury of planning ahead but the drink market should be less than half of what it is today. Most people drink bottled drinks because of marketing and subliminal pressures and habits.
There are alternatives to plastic. As stupidly expensive as it is, Liquid Death is water in a can. I’ve also seen water in paper cartons and larger bottles made of glass. Soda is available in cans as well. Teas and juices are available in glass. You may be choosing to drink a particular brand that’s only available in plastic.
You have plenty of choices. You have the choice to drink a particular product out of plastic. You have the choice to not drink that. You may be faced with having to pay a little more or to drink something that’s not your favorite. In an ideal world, more people would spend a little more on their purchases to increase demand for the manufacturing of a product which could bring prices down while decreasing demand and manufacturing of popular packaging.
I’m an Uber driver and I buy so many bottled drinks. My plan is to just get like two or three liter bottles to keep in the car to hydrate me for the day off tap water from home.
Mostly just to save myself money though. Gotta get a buffer built and I’m just barely making it now.
I love that you've recognized an opportunity for improvement and established a reasonable solution.
Carbonated drinks are tough but if you're looking for something other than water, make some iced tea from scratch or from powered form or fruit juice from concentrate - anything you can buy in bulk - to keep in insulated bottles.
Maybe it's for the same reason Moscow Mules are served in copper mugs. The container conducts heat well and therefore feels very cold to the touch when you put your lips on it, which enhances the feeling of it being refreshing.
We have saturated our environment with aluminum to the point where one of our "background ailments" is light metal poisoning from aluminum - most notably as a decline in intelligence. We keep 'choosing' the cheapest easiest solution to liquids packaging and distribution - and each one of them - EXCEPT GLASS - has come back to bite us on the ass.
No. Lead is another though. Aluminum isn't common at all because it's locked up in bauxite, which must be refined in order to 'release' the aluminum content.
The world has done an excellent job of releasing aluminum from it's 'prison', and now aluminum is "loose" and causing problems with human cognitive abilities. (actually, all animals - but it's hard to notice a decline in mental ability in animals).
Light metal's poisoning, radioactive fallout from over 5,000 nuclear explosions, lead, CO2, decline in O2 atmospheric content... we've caused ourselves to start devolving.
Well when it comes to water I feel like it has a lot to do with corporate events and advertising. If you are in Florida for example and the water tastes like it's been filtered with dead fish you might be more inclined to grab a bottle.
As for soda I think it has a lot to do with the cost of using glass bottles. People don't really get them refilled. They just recycle them.
Same. The most recent time I bought a plastic bottle was on a recent holiday for a week-long car trip away from home in a country where tap water was not drinkable. I was happy to see they had big 10-liter bottles in the shop so I could refill my reusable water bottle during the whole trip.
Aluminum is fine if you're going to pour your drink into a glass, but despite the plastic inner sleeve you're still going to taste the metal edge if you sip from the can.
Imo glass bottle is king. Then can, then plastic bottle if I'm in the middle of the Mojave desert having walked for 3 days with absolutely no form of hydration and am literally on the cusp of death. It tastes like shit and is bad for environment; not recyclable. Fuck plastic bottles.
As a klutz, with stupid tile floors I can't afford to replace, I have come to appreciate plastic cups. Only having to clean up the spilled liquid, not deal with trying to protect kids and cats and my feet and hands as I scramble to get every shard, is worth the flatness of flavor.
You do realize that aluminum bottles are plastic bottles yes ? Plastic bottle with a thin aluminium insert to block sunlight from degrading the contents.
It's somewhat more expensive, and under current rules disposal is basically not the manufacturer's problem, or even the consumer's. Are they more common in (I assume) the UK?
Weight is also a factor. All these bottles/etc are often transported in very carbon intensive supply chains. Any additional weight scales that footprint and has to be managed.
They could use the Euro Bottle or NRW Bottle refill glass bottles, that a lot of European countries ate using. They're being refilled 12 times on average.
I don't like cans because the drink gets so hot so fast, it isn't insulating at all, but in general don't buy individually packaged anything. Lots of glass bottles of booze and wine, but much less "turnover" that way, a few a month. Water from the tap, fancy water we have a Lifestraw pitcher in the refrigerator (tap water is safe here but the filtered cooled water is delicious). Bring an empty water bottle to concerts, or the sealed liter bottle (whichever is allowed).
So not none, still a few here and there, now and then. But mostly just try to avoid anything packed for individual servings.