The European Union has enacted a directive requiring all single-use plastic bottles to have their caps tethered to the bottle, aiming to reduce the amount of plastic litter. This article explores the potential impacts of this policy, including its effects on recycling and the broader challenges of plastic waste management. Plastic pollution and recycling are key topics discussed.
Tethering the Tide of Litter
A great move against plastic The latest one comes from the European Union, in favor of the decree that mandates that all single-use plastic bottles must have their corresponding caps integrated into a waterfall. While the bottle cap change might seem trivial, it could play a critical role in tackling one of the most widespread forms of litter — loose caps.
Bottle caps have been a major component of the global plastic waste problem for decades. Being lightweight and detachable, they are often carelessly tossed away in inappropriate places which end up traveling into our waterways, to the oceans. Bottle caps are among the top ten littered items in rivers and the sea. This also means they can travel long distances, where they can be ingested by marine wildlife.
A sticky common solution to a hard problem
The tethered cap design is based on a packaging success from the 1980s — when fully removable pull tabs on aluminum cans were replaced with stay-on tabs. This change to the design kept these jagged metal bits from becoming dangerous debris. In the same vein, the EU’s updated policy is to make bottle caps impossible or at least harder to throw away as they are situated physically on top of the bottle.
Ita€™s an elegant tactic, and an example of the sort of low-hanging fruit that can go a long way in putting the onus back where it belongs: on manufacturers, rather than simply relying upon consumers to do the right thing with their bottle caps. The tether creates a single, more maneuverable trash that makes it harder for wildlife to swallow. It would also help recycling programs, as caps will be able to be recognized and handled on the same bale as the bottles.
Deal with the Complications of Plastic Recycling
Although the tethered cap is a step in the right direction, it also points to more deep-seated problems around how we manage our plastic waste. That stuff is difficult to recycle, and if it even gets recycled with any success — the process usually yields a down-cycled product that cannot itself be easily recycled. Most of the plastic waste sent to be recycled is sent to landfill, with only 12.4% of all Europe’s plastic waste eventually being recycled and just 4.5% in the United States.
It highlights the importance of a more holistic solution to tackling plastic pollution that is not just about increasing recycling rates. These include legislation that places responsibility on packer fillers to manage the environmental performance of their packaging as well as the development of new ways to deal with mixed material waste on a global scale. The tethered cap policy is a step in the right direction, but we still have a lot of work to do when it comes to achieving plastic circularity.
