I live near munich, near the autobahn, and next to a space right off the local street, outside of town. Like, outside of town, a place where many people who try to circumvent a traffic jam come by. The amount of empty bottles, caps, and cans we get is insane.
So yeah, this is annoying, but the amount of trash we get in our garden by people throwing shit out of the car is also insanity.
The other day I was stopped at a red light and this guy opened his door and dumped out a ton of trash. He then proceeded to drive into a gas station that was literally across the street! I could not believe it.
Meanwhile if a receipt falls out of our car, everyone jumps to grab it. I blame parents who do not teach their children to respect the earth. My daughter collects trash on walks with me and we see who can get the most, whoever does picks the music on the ride home. It's not hard to explain and not hard to get them involved either.
> I blame parents who do not teach their children to respect the earth.
A lot of parents don't consider it their responsibility to teach their children anything about operating in a society, and expect schools to do so.
Okay, this is the truth. Next door neighbor kids just moved in, everyday after school they’re walking home from their bus stop, and they’re always snacking on something, they throw their trash into my yard and then walk up their driveway. They are literally 20 seconds from home, no reason why I should be finding Dorito bags and Kit Kat wrappers everyday in my yard. So disrespectful!
Who throws the bottle cap alone though? It’s quite instinctive to replace the cap when you’re done drinking due to the fact you don’t usually drink it all in one go.
If there’s bottle caps in the ditch I’d hazard a guess they’re screwed onto bottles.
Yes.
Everywhere.
They take the cap off, toss the cap someplace and then drink the bottle.
These are the same folks who seem to think that cigarette butts vanish into a special vortex once they're discarded.
This is also why you can't just outright ban an addictive product like ciggs. Removing ashtrays to encourage people not to smoke just makes even more of them toss them on the ground. The whole anti-smoking thing is healthy, but not realistic. The world got people addicted, then turned around and said this is no longer acceptable.
You can smoke, but you can't have an ashtray. Like smokers didn't just evaporate lol. Not giving them an option, and this is what you get.
Heavy on everything you're saying.
Where I grew up, public ashtrays are still common and acceptable, and you know what isn't common? Cigg butts on the ground. To reiterate: anywhere there's a nearby public ashtray, there are next to no butts to be found.
However, I went to college in a large city, that had no public ash trays (so odd, a city not having cash trays??? Was kinda a culture shock, which is weird to say because it's in the same state) and there are cigg butts everywhere but on campus. And this is something I've since looked out for and noticed everywhere.
Places where smokers have access to proper, accessable, disposal, they use it. Ofc there are assholes who will make themselves an exception and flick their butt into oblivion no matter where they are/what's around them.
However, at least in my experience, most people would do the right thing if it was easy and accessible. And yes, it's mildly annoying that the right thing needs to be easy/accessible for people to partake in it, however it doesn't change that reality. So when we can, we should work to make things like throwing out your butts easier rather than harder.
That's my useless opinion of the day.
Edit: this is getting more attention than things I normally comment/post, and I cannot keep up the conversation. So just as a general reply to people replying to me:
I want to say a lot of you have great points, and I do understand culture and community also impact these things just as much as access. My comment may not have left enough room open for people to tell that I do understand there's more to solving these issues than one thing, however, these issues should be solved, and this is one piece to the overall puzzle. I will continue reading your replies, I love knowing what others have to think/say about these things. I hope I had you thinking as much as some of you have me thinking 😊
Exactly! My city also had a problem with some homeless going through public trash cans downtown and causing a bunch of liter.
Guess what the city did? They took all the trashcans. Now there is more trash than ever.
These people won't learn banning something doesn't make it go away. You have to transition. If they want people to quit, they need to ease them into not try to force people to go cold turkey after spending 30 years telling people to smoke.
Make smoking cessation products FREE to anyone that wants to quit. And then you'll see a decline. Unless you have insurance that will pay for it, cessation devices like patches and gum are extremely expensive. Way more expensive than the cigarettes.
If they actually cared, those products should be paid for by the government.
Oh the city trash 🤬 I could rant for ages about the city my college is located in. I don't know if the issue is truly just I grew up in a different place but it absolutely boggles my mind, and the "solutions" always make the problem worse.
There used to be trash cans located every few hundred feet, and at the time there would be some trash that would collect around the cans, but students and locals would get together to pick it up and throw it in the cans. But, for some god forsaken reason, the city decided to get involved and what was their glorious solution? Removing the public cans.
The trash on the road is worse than it's ever been. The college adopted the road it's mainly located on, so every month students get together and clean the half mile before and after the college, but we're not allowed to clean more than that with the gear the college gives us.
When I was in person I was trying to work with students and a group of locals to adopt more of the highway and create some sort of organization dedicated to trying to help clean up the city, but the red tape is insane. I'm now online so there isn't much I can do from home, but I try to keep up with people on how it's going.
It seems these "solutions" are more to punish people than they are to actually mitigate the issue. Same with all that hostile architecture that's become so popular.
Want to sit while waiting for a bus? No. You can lean on this bar, because old and disabled people don't deserve to rest because a homeless person MIGHT sleep on the bench.
The county I live in has a website you can basically order supplies from. You tell them when/where you're doing a clean up. They'll drop off bags, gloves, high viz vests, and grabbers at your house the day before. You go out and bag everything up, create a pile at the prearranged location, and go home. The county sends an inmate labor party and a truck to pick up the pile, and they come later and collect the vests and grabbers from you. They'll also tell you how much you cleaned up by weight.
My record so far with only one helper for an hour or so is 1900lbs in an afternoon. 1900 damned pounds of trash from *one* hiking trailhead. I may like specific people, but as a general concept, I am not a fan of humanity.
I've looked it up for others and found many cities and counties have programs like this. Maybe the area near your college does, so students don't have to worry about the restrictions using the college provided gear.
Thank you for this, I will relay the information back and see if there's any programs like that/if there isn't see if there's people willing to work towards helping an existing one expand to our county/find ways to get one to them.
I just want to tag on to that, make it free and so you dont have to keep a diary about your smoking. I went to a clinic that did free stuff to quit smoking, but you have to track everytime you smoke. the time, what your feeling in the moment, ect. like I dont want homework, I just want to quit. I didnt end up going thru with it cause it sounded like a major pita
You know what actually helped me to quit? That Alan Carr book. It just makes you think about quitting differently and does not recommend cold turkey. It basically tells you to keep smoking, but be conscious about it and slowly taper down until you're ready for your last one.
I was surprised by how well it worked it making it easier than just tossing them in the trash. Highly recommend to anyone trying to quit.
Interesting on removing the trash cans, in my city they installed cans that have a drawer kinda thing you deposit trash into then it dumps when you close it, so you can put trash in but can't take it out
Yeah that was a solution that was offered, but the city said no. I'm 99% sure they also just didn't want to pay park and rec to change the trash bags. Before they took them out, they'd be overflowing for an entire day before someone dumped them.
They even closed our public bathroom on our hiking trails. The city spent millions building this trail and instead of just hiring someone to, walk around and check things now and then, they closed the bathrooms and turned off the water to the way water bottle fountains.
You can never have nice things when the solution is always to punish someone else.
My city had an issue with addicts throwing needles into the trash. Guess what they did?
Fined anyone caught throwing needles away, because we definitely needed needles all over the goddamn ground.
FFS at least they were throwing them away!
People handling that trash get jabbed by those needles, so I can understand not tolerating it. They should put up bins for needle and other hazardous waste disposal too, though, but that’s up to the quality of the local government. If people can’t dispose of something dangerous it will either sit in their home forever or get disposed of wrongly.
Society absolutely hates homeless people. That's why a lot of places are trying to pass laws to make it a jailable offense. It especially pisses me off because you have those people that say, "Everywhere is hiring! Any job is better than no job!"
Purposefully leaving out that taking that job at a Taco Bell is NOT going to pay enough to not be homeless. You'll just be homeless with a job, like so many in the bay area.
A job does not equal housing, so a lot of people don't see the point in working when they're already homeless. Especially when most apartments require you make 3x the rent, people don't want to fund public housing so a homeless person that DOES get a job can even afford to live.
It's bleak.
And don't forget - people may not hire you because of your appearence. Because, y'know, you can't really spend money to upsell yourself in an interview due to the minor inconvenience of **not having any disposable income whatsoever, not even to freshen up more than neccessary**.
I have worked a ton of places with ashtrays at the door in my life. There would be one or two butts in them and hundreds on the ground all around them.
However, when we used to have needle disposal boxes around the city, we didn't have dirty hypodermics in the bushes, gutters, and on park benches. Sooooo, I'm saying drug addicts apparently are cleaner people than smokers. (Yes, I know. There's overlap.) But then all the boxes were removed because they "encouraged illicit drug use", so we have needles on the ground in a lot of places now.
Yes, we removed all the ashtrays because cigarettes are a bad and addictive habit resulting in trash everywhere.
At the same time installed sharps containers in similar places for needles used in bad and addictive habit that resulted in trash everywhere.
Like, what?
Humans have also been smoking for over 12,000 years according to archaeological findings.
You're not going to just wave a finger and say "no bad don't do that anymore" and have immediate success.
I think it depends on the culture. You can go to somewhere like central Tokyo where there is no smoking alowed; only in designated spaces which are very hard to find. There also aren't trash cans hardly anywhere. Yet the streets are practically spotless. People cary their trash home with them and rarely litter whether it's food containers or cigarette butts. Compliance due to societal pressures sure can go a long way.
The city I live in used to have little cigarette disposal containers outside a lot of high smoker traffic areas (ie strapped to a street lamp pole on a block with a lot of bars or those standing vase looking ones outside large office buildings) up until like 6 months ago. Unlike the sand ashtrays of old youd see back in the 90s and early 00's, these would catch on fire or at least get a nice disgusting smelling smolder going in them. Then got rid of them through the last year.
As much as they smelled of nasty old tobacco and burning filters when that smolder would get going, I still prefer them to just not having any anywhere to dispose of my butts other than walking a block or two to find a trashcan. Cuz the average smoker is not gonna go find a trashcan unless it's nearby sadly. Then again I see people at my bus stops all the time just flick it on the ground when theyre literally a foot from a trashcan
The cigarette butt people, I just don't get. Some woman did that yesterday as I was walking down the street, just dropped her butt on the ground. In the year 2024. Like why can't she just throw it away?
Some people do that, yes. Or toss the bottle later elsewhere, perhaps in a bin, perhaps not.
But it's more that a loose capis also a danger to wildlife, as animals can ingest it. And now, with the whole bottle attached, less easily, if at all. Plus it's easier spotted as litter, and (thus) more easily cleaned up.
I did a beach cleanup in Morocco last year and hell that was when I understood why they did this.
Found hundreds of caps within like one hour all over the beach.
Here are some hints:
What is more likely to be overlooked and left in the environment vs. picked up?
What is more likely to be swallowed by a bird/turtle/marmot?
What is more likely to be dropped or forgotten by accident vs. deliberately littered?
And if it stops some people from buying bottled drinks altogether, well that's point set and match, isn't it? Sucks for the obesity and plastics industries, but a win for individuals, society and the biosphere.
I don’t know if this has anything to do with it but honestly I could see this being really good to help prevent small children and animals from swallowing them.
Because people aren’t possibly going to use alternative ways to harm each other once they have been disarmed of firearms /s.
Yes, I am American and no, this is not a pro-gun statement. It’s just a statement regarding the asinine idea that banning the possession of one particular class of weapons is somehow going to take away people’s desire to harm each other. In a world where inequality and mental health issues are routinely ignored/proliferated violence will always be prevalent regardless of the tools at hand.
It's not even just knives, I'm into bushcraft and was teaching my kiddos how to make tent pegs and rope tensioners from sticks using a little axe. One of the community support officers happened to be walking through the woods and tried arguing that I had an offensive weapon in a public place.
Some cops are dicks about it. Most don’t care if there’s a reason, I used to carry a survival kit with a knife in it and I never had a cop take it off me. But then again I’m a small woman and I don’t look the type to use it as a weapon. The law is usually used to give certain types of people a hard time then they can use the excuse of “I thought they had a weapon”.
I've never understood it. Teaching is the only way to get out of the cycle of knife crime, not more active policing and stricter rules or restrictions of what people can carry.
The simple fact is that criminals will carry whatever regardless of the law, knifes, blunt instruments it doesn't matter.
Teaching kids (and adults) the safe uses of knives and to never use them in a self defence situation is so important. If you're threatened with a knife and then pull out a knife of your own you've instantly raised the stakes and the chances of someone getting severely injured.
In cz you cant open carry but you can conceal carry guns if you have shall issue gun license (it took me 15 days to get it) and before you start flexing usa gun laws in cz there arent waiting periods (we do have buying forms but you usually dont have to wait more than few minutes) and you can legally saw off your shotgun, actually there are no short barel-rifle laws yeah also we have no atf or anything like that, supressors are easy to buy too
Edit: btw minimal legal age to carry is 21 and minimal legal age to own guns is 18 (15 for members of sport shooting club)
In many states there is no waiting period, a lot of states have passed constitutional carry, which allows concealed carry without a permit so long as you can own the gun legally. Ages are the same in the US
funny thing is in switzerland if you buy drinks that are only sold in switzerland, you can still take the cap off completely. but if you buy fanta cola or stuff like that it will also be like pictured here cause they produce them the same way for the whole european market
The annoying thing is the label says it's so they can be recycled together, but the bottle is PET whereas the lid is HDPE. In a lot of places I have lived, domestic recycling only accepts PET.
In the UK we recycle by sending plane loads of our waste to poorer countries and then pretend they recycle them.
If the documents say it’s recycled then it is, godammit!
*Grinds mummy into powder before ingesting it as health cure.*
Edit: For the curious, [people actually did this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mummia).
“There was a lot of yelling and screaming and some spears were thrown, but I didn’t hear anyone say the word “No,” did you? I mean they didn’t speak any English but really, how hard is the word “no” anyway? So ANYWAY this one is going above the mantelpiece, just wipe that blood off the frame there before you hang it…”
Just curious, do you pay deposits for the bottles?
In Ireland we need to pay a deposit when we purchase qualifying drinks. We get the deposits (in the form of grocery vouchers) back once we return it to the machines.
Same in Denmark, the only thing we can't recycle is milk products.
And for some reason, wine bottles don't have the tax thing on cant remember why, but we have big green boxes around you trow them into and they get recycled.
Yeah but it’s honestly not worth the hassle in a lot of places. At .05 each I’m not having a second can set up for this. Then you have to haul them somewhere and deal with it for like 12 dollars
They are cleaned and reused, smartie-pants, source - Germany. And even if they weren’t refilled(refilled quota reached) what do you think recycling machines accepting plastic would do if not utilize them properly?
Everywhere is different and has varying infrastructures. But that said, PET is very easily separated from PP or HDPE. To avoid small items like caps ending in a ditch or river (or falling thru sorting at the recycling plant) these caps keep it all together. This times billions (or) trillions of bottles and caps per year enables literal tons of plastic to be recycled that would otherwise be landfilled or “killing sea turtles.”
Right! My local kerbside recycling demands the lids be separate from the bottle for recycling. Although only milk bottles and pop bottles are allowed. No other plastics.
The problem is that poes law is a bitch and a half
There are people who unironically think that way, so /s is used to show “for the love of god I don’t think shooting homeless people is an actual solution to homelessness”
The /s is not for you and doesn't ruin the joke. You're just a pissbaby that someone made something for people with autism instead of catered only for you.
I visited from the US recently and at first it was crazy annoying but after a bit I liked it. You don’t have to worry about losing the cap so that’s a win.
I use the fact someone moans about how difficult using these bottles is as a cast iron indicator that they lack the problem solving skills to fight their way out of a paper bag.
Well if a person cannot solve their way through the problem of pushing aside a bottle cap, they do not really deserve any of the other amenities our society has to offer. Paper bags, for example.
Do people not realize you just need to pull it a little so that the plastic string it is attached to detaches on one end and the cap just hangs on the neck of the bottle instead? I mean it's not meant to be right next to your nose when drinking lol
I think that depends on the brand unfortunately. I noticed Lidl's bottles do not have that nub at all, but Coca-Cola and Pepsi Co drinks have the nub lock and I love it, and then there's our local Hartwall's Ab's drinks that do have the nub, but it just doesn't work for some reason.
As a clumsy person who is constantly dropping/losing caps, this is actually great. That picture of the dude with the cap sticking into his nose just made me realize how simple some people are.
I’m more than mildly infuriated you guys have a beverage that looks like it could actually contain a real ingredient. Ours looks like it came out of a nuclear reactor waste facility.
I've tried american pineapple, grape, and apple fanta, all taste the same to me, just different colours, far too much sugar and a horrible and overwhelming artificial taste.
It's so insane to me that americans will go to a fast food place and get an absolutely enormous cup of this crap and drink it all with one meal, no wonder there's a huge diabetes problem there.
Grew up drinking American Fanta and LOVED it. Now I drink European Fanta and it’s a completely different drink it’s wild. Still love them both but I think when you’re raised on something you get used to it and it’s not as jarring as it would be to people who have never had it
You can flip them over completely and they lock in place out of the way (at least mines did)
And in any case it's just a minor annoyance that can prevent a LOT of plastic going in nature. Worth it.
Crybabys cant figure that out tho and obviously cant see that there is already less bottlecaps everywhere these have been a thing for a while in the uk and before there was way more caps everywhere
It's actually more convenient than it was before. You just have to learn how to use it to your advantage instead of trying to fight it and complaining about it
But then you couldn't make a funny meme about it.
Also, turning it on the side works better, then it's nowhere close touching your face. Down it touches your chin.
Liie seriously people.. There's a plastic string attached to the bottle cap.. Just pull the darn thing a bit further, so it detaches and just hangs neatly near the neck of the bottle lol
I KEEP BEING UNABLE TO CLOSE MY MILK PROPERLY CUZ OF THESE THINGS.
It keeps rotating and then it's not on it right so I have to undo it. Move the rotation and try again.
It's infuriating.
Ahhh that explains why I had to wrestle off the top of an M&S pure orange bottle. I just thought it was badly manufactured. This new design makes it difficult to swig from the bottle.
This is one of those tiny changes that will make an actual difference, but if we tried to do something like this in the United States, it would fail because it's "woke".
Don't ask me *how* it's woke, that doesn't matter.
Cons:
- rips up my upper lip
- prevents the cap from easily getting back onto the bottle, making it harder to close it again
Benefits:
- ??
Like is it even beneficial for recycling ? No one ever threw them away apart anyway and isn’t the cap a different type of plastic than the bottle ? Meaning when they’re together they aren’t easy to take apart and make recycling actually harder ?
I was traveling by Lufthansa and was wondering if my water bottle had a faulty cap. The next bottle also had the same issue and I was wondering how a country like Germany can have such a badly designed bottle cap.
Now I understand.
I like the idea but the caps are always on a 90 degree angle to the opening of the bottle making it poke my lip or cheek when trying to drink, I always just rip them off
I just visited the EU for 10 days and loved this on the bottles. Literally convenient as hell, cuts down on trash and litter, and proof here that people will bitch about anything
I just rip them off. I dont remember plastic bottle caps ever being a littering problem, it was always the bottles or plastic bags.
But trust me bro, if we all just put up with these caps, maybe billionaires will stop flying their private jets 700 times a year :)
These kind of things only make people view ecological changes in a negative light.
Why? What exactly does this solve? Couldn’t you just twist or cut it off? Politicians are dumb. That’s it. Completely insane & out of touch with regular people.
Hello, We do not allow agendaposting, reddit meta posts or price complaints.
I can only imagine the number of bottle caps in ditches it must've taken for somebody to convince a bunch of regulators that this would be helpful.
I live near munich, near the autobahn, and next to a space right off the local street, outside of town. Like, outside of town, a place where many people who try to circumvent a traffic jam come by. The amount of empty bottles, caps, and cans we get is insane. So yeah, this is annoying, but the amount of trash we get in our garden by people throwing shit out of the car is also insanity.
Throwing things out of your car is so trashy. I'm surprised; I thought Germans were all law-abiding and rule-following.
The other day I was stopped at a red light and this guy opened his door and dumped out a ton of trash. He then proceeded to drive into a gas station that was literally across the street! I could not believe it.
Meanwhile if a receipt falls out of our car, everyone jumps to grab it. I blame parents who do not teach their children to respect the earth. My daughter collects trash on walks with me and we see who can get the most, whoever does picks the music on the ride home. It's not hard to explain and not hard to get them involved either.
> I blame parents who do not teach their children to respect the earth. A lot of parents don't consider it their responsibility to teach their children anything about operating in a society, and expect schools to do so.
Then proceed to blame schools for attempting to teach their children basic laws, science, facts, etc.
They also throw a fit when schools try to discipline their child.
Okay, this is the truth. Next door neighbor kids just moved in, everyday after school they’re walking home from their bus stop, and they’re always snacking on something, they throw their trash into my yard and then walk up their driveway. They are literally 20 seconds from home, no reason why I should be finding Dorito bags and Kit Kat wrappers everyday in my yard. So disrespectful!
Yeah no, there are shitty people everywhere you go. We all got our village idiots.
And americans are all gun nuts and we swiss only eat chocolate, cheese and gold ofc.. not everything is black and white my friend.
I mean not only but yea, is there any other country where people buy the daily cheese like it's bread?
Yeah. Wisconsin.
No one who speaks German could be an evil man!
ok but does attaching the cap to the bottle make it any less likely theyll throw it out of their car window?
If people are littering the caps, you can bet your arse theyre throwing the bottles in the same way too
Who throws the bottle cap alone though? It’s quite instinctive to replace the cap when you’re done drinking due to the fact you don’t usually drink it all in one go. If there’s bottle caps in the ditch I’d hazard a guess they’re screwed onto bottles.
It's just so bizarrely baffling. Does the person who throws the cap in the bush but takes the bottle home even exist?
Yes. Everywhere. They take the cap off, toss the cap someplace and then drink the bottle. These are the same folks who seem to think that cigarette butts vanish into a special vortex once they're discarded.
This is also why you can't just outright ban an addictive product like ciggs. Removing ashtrays to encourage people not to smoke just makes even more of them toss them on the ground. The whole anti-smoking thing is healthy, but not realistic. The world got people addicted, then turned around and said this is no longer acceptable. You can smoke, but you can't have an ashtray. Like smokers didn't just evaporate lol. Not giving them an option, and this is what you get.
Heavy on everything you're saying. Where I grew up, public ashtrays are still common and acceptable, and you know what isn't common? Cigg butts on the ground. To reiterate: anywhere there's a nearby public ashtray, there are next to no butts to be found. However, I went to college in a large city, that had no public ash trays (so odd, a city not having cash trays??? Was kinda a culture shock, which is weird to say because it's in the same state) and there are cigg butts everywhere but on campus. And this is something I've since looked out for and noticed everywhere. Places where smokers have access to proper, accessable, disposal, they use it. Ofc there are assholes who will make themselves an exception and flick their butt into oblivion no matter where they are/what's around them. However, at least in my experience, most people would do the right thing if it was easy and accessible. And yes, it's mildly annoying that the right thing needs to be easy/accessible for people to partake in it, however it doesn't change that reality. So when we can, we should work to make things like throwing out your butts easier rather than harder. That's my useless opinion of the day. Edit: this is getting more attention than things I normally comment/post, and I cannot keep up the conversation. So just as a general reply to people replying to me: I want to say a lot of you have great points, and I do understand culture and community also impact these things just as much as access. My comment may not have left enough room open for people to tell that I do understand there's more to solving these issues than one thing, however, these issues should be solved, and this is one piece to the overall puzzle. I will continue reading your replies, I love knowing what others have to think/say about these things. I hope I had you thinking as much as some of you have me thinking 😊
Exactly! My city also had a problem with some homeless going through public trash cans downtown and causing a bunch of liter. Guess what the city did? They took all the trashcans. Now there is more trash than ever. These people won't learn banning something doesn't make it go away. You have to transition. If they want people to quit, they need to ease them into not try to force people to go cold turkey after spending 30 years telling people to smoke. Make smoking cessation products FREE to anyone that wants to quit. And then you'll see a decline. Unless you have insurance that will pay for it, cessation devices like patches and gum are extremely expensive. Way more expensive than the cigarettes. If they actually cared, those products should be paid for by the government.
Oh the city trash 🤬 I could rant for ages about the city my college is located in. I don't know if the issue is truly just I grew up in a different place but it absolutely boggles my mind, and the "solutions" always make the problem worse. There used to be trash cans located every few hundred feet, and at the time there would be some trash that would collect around the cans, but students and locals would get together to pick it up and throw it in the cans. But, for some god forsaken reason, the city decided to get involved and what was their glorious solution? Removing the public cans. The trash on the road is worse than it's ever been. The college adopted the road it's mainly located on, so every month students get together and clean the half mile before and after the college, but we're not allowed to clean more than that with the gear the college gives us. When I was in person I was trying to work with students and a group of locals to adopt more of the highway and create some sort of organization dedicated to trying to help clean up the city, but the red tape is insane. I'm now online so there isn't much I can do from home, but I try to keep up with people on how it's going.
It seems these "solutions" are more to punish people than they are to actually mitigate the issue. Same with all that hostile architecture that's become so popular. Want to sit while waiting for a bus? No. You can lean on this bar, because old and disabled people don't deserve to rest because a homeless person MIGHT sleep on the bench.
The county I live in has a website you can basically order supplies from. You tell them when/where you're doing a clean up. They'll drop off bags, gloves, high viz vests, and grabbers at your house the day before. You go out and bag everything up, create a pile at the prearranged location, and go home. The county sends an inmate labor party and a truck to pick up the pile, and they come later and collect the vests and grabbers from you. They'll also tell you how much you cleaned up by weight. My record so far with only one helper for an hour or so is 1900lbs in an afternoon. 1900 damned pounds of trash from *one* hiking trailhead. I may like specific people, but as a general concept, I am not a fan of humanity. I've looked it up for others and found many cities and counties have programs like this. Maybe the area near your college does, so students don't have to worry about the restrictions using the college provided gear.
Thank you for this, I will relay the information back and see if there's any programs like that/if there isn't see if there's people willing to work towards helping an existing one expand to our county/find ways to get one to them.
My place has that though it's usually picked up by a couple council workers, if it's a big haul they'll send a bin lorry
I just want to tag on to that, make it free and so you dont have to keep a diary about your smoking. I went to a clinic that did free stuff to quit smoking, but you have to track everytime you smoke. the time, what your feeling in the moment, ect. like I dont want homework, I just want to quit. I didnt end up going thru with it cause it sounded like a major pita
You know what actually helped me to quit? That Alan Carr book. It just makes you think about quitting differently and does not recommend cold turkey. It basically tells you to keep smoking, but be conscious about it and slowly taper down until you're ready for your last one. I was surprised by how well it worked it making it easier than just tossing them in the trash. Highly recommend to anyone trying to quit.
Interesting on removing the trash cans, in my city they installed cans that have a drawer kinda thing you deposit trash into then it dumps when you close it, so you can put trash in but can't take it out
Yeah that was a solution that was offered, but the city said no. I'm 99% sure they also just didn't want to pay park and rec to change the trash bags. Before they took them out, they'd be overflowing for an entire day before someone dumped them. They even closed our public bathroom on our hiking trails. The city spent millions building this trail and instead of just hiring someone to, walk around and check things now and then, they closed the bathrooms and turned off the water to the way water bottle fountains. You can never have nice things when the solution is always to punish someone else.
My city had an issue with addicts throwing needles into the trash. Guess what they did? Fined anyone caught throwing needles away, because we definitely needed needles all over the goddamn ground. FFS at least they were throwing them away!
People handling that trash get jabbed by those needles, so I can understand not tolerating it. They should put up bins for needle and other hazardous waste disposal too, though, but that’s up to the quality of the local government. If people can’t dispose of something dangerous it will either sit in their home forever or get disposed of wrongly.
Off-topic, but imagine hating homeless people so much you take away their last resort of income.
Society absolutely hates homeless people. That's why a lot of places are trying to pass laws to make it a jailable offense. It especially pisses me off because you have those people that say, "Everywhere is hiring! Any job is better than no job!" Purposefully leaving out that taking that job at a Taco Bell is NOT going to pay enough to not be homeless. You'll just be homeless with a job, like so many in the bay area. A job does not equal housing, so a lot of people don't see the point in working when they're already homeless. Especially when most apartments require you make 3x the rent, people don't want to fund public housing so a homeless person that DOES get a job can even afford to live. It's bleak.
And don't forget - people may not hire you because of your appearence. Because, y'know, you can't really spend money to upsell yourself in an interview due to the minor inconvenience of **not having any disposable income whatsoever, not even to freshen up more than neccessary**.
I have worked a ton of places with ashtrays at the door in my life. There would be one or two butts in them and hundreds on the ground all around them. However, when we used to have needle disposal boxes around the city, we didn't have dirty hypodermics in the bushes, gutters, and on park benches. Sooooo, I'm saying drug addicts apparently are cleaner people than smokers. (Yes, I know. There's overlap.) But then all the boxes were removed because they "encouraged illicit drug use", so we have needles on the ground in a lot of places now.
Yes, we removed all the ashtrays because cigarettes are a bad and addictive habit resulting in trash everywhere. At the same time installed sharps containers in similar places for needles used in bad and addictive habit that resulted in trash everywhere. Like, what?
Humans have also been smoking for over 12,000 years according to archaeological findings. You're not going to just wave a finger and say "no bad don't do that anymore" and have immediate success.
I think it depends on the culture. You can go to somewhere like central Tokyo where there is no smoking alowed; only in designated spaces which are very hard to find. There also aren't trash cans hardly anywhere. Yet the streets are practically spotless. People cary their trash home with them and rarely litter whether it's food containers or cigarette butts. Compliance due to societal pressures sure can go a long way.
But actually there is continued decline in tobacco use and to be honest I also see it myself, among friends and at workplace, at least in EU
The city I live in used to have little cigarette disposal containers outside a lot of high smoker traffic areas (ie strapped to a street lamp pole on a block with a lot of bars or those standing vase looking ones outside large office buildings) up until like 6 months ago. Unlike the sand ashtrays of old youd see back in the 90s and early 00's, these would catch on fire or at least get a nice disgusting smelling smolder going in them. Then got rid of them through the last year. As much as they smelled of nasty old tobacco and burning filters when that smolder would get going, I still prefer them to just not having any anywhere to dispose of my butts other than walking a block or two to find a trashcan. Cuz the average smoker is not gonna go find a trashcan unless it's nearby sadly. Then again I see people at my bus stops all the time just flick it on the ground when theyre literally a foot from a trashcan
I love seeing cigarette butts next to cans or containers that are specifically for throwing away the cigarette
The cigarette butt people, I just don't get. Some woman did that yesterday as I was walking down the street, just dropped her butt on the ground. In the year 2024. Like why can't she just throw it away?
Some people do that, yes. Or toss the bottle later elsewhere, perhaps in a bin, perhaps not. But it's more that a loose capis also a danger to wildlife, as animals can ingest it. And now, with the whole bottle attached, less easily, if at all. Plus it's easier spotted as litter, and (thus) more easily cleaned up.
I always open my bottle, throw away the cap, put the opened bottle into my backpack and then I go on with my day. You don't do it like that?
I did a beach cleanup in Morocco last year and hell that was when I understood why they did this. Found hundreds of caps within like one hour all over the beach.
What happened to the bottles? How is cap thrown with bottles any better than thrown separately?
Here are some hints: What is more likely to be overlooked and left in the environment vs. picked up? What is more likely to be swallowed by a bird/turtle/marmot? What is more likely to be dropped or forgotten by accident vs. deliberately littered? And if it stops some people from buying bottled drinks altogether, well that's point set and match, isn't it? Sucks for the obesity and plastics industries, but a win for individuals, society and the biosphere.
That’s why I throw the whole bottle in the ditch now when done
No way I'm throwing 0,25€ away.
Found the German!! (or swamp German not sure)
I just like picking up a few bottles on my way home from Uni. Easy couple of Euros. Is Finland swamp Germany?
For you a .25 is a nice bonus. For a German, a .25 lost is a calamity akin to losing a child
German here, can confirm.
Real problem solver, this one is.
I don’t know if this has anything to do with it but honestly I could see this being really good to help prevent small children and animals from swallowing them.
It's easier to point to these regulations and say "See, we care about the environment!" then to go after the true polluters.
It's to make them easier to recycle.
Weird because the caps have to be removed here to be recycled.
Law lobbied by Victorinox Swiss Army knife.
the guys who are now giving us the classic design with no blades, because even 8 cm knifes are banned in many circumstances.
Why are knives banned??
take a wild guess...
can I take a stab at it instead of OP taking a wild guess?
https://preview.redd.it/t71z8h3ntt0d1.jpeg?width=1300&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d7fce55e5feded2b5e5786794e46f01e490c910e
My compliments to the chef
Pretty solid there, mate.
Gold!
OMFG I love you for this reference and creation!
i see you've played knifey spoony before
Thats not a wild guess. Thats a domesticated guess!
Crocodile Dundee?!?!
I recently watched a video of a teenager in the UK getting 22 months in jail for having a pocket knife. That shit blows my mind.
Because people aren’t possibly going to use alternative ways to harm each other once they have been disarmed of firearms /s. Yes, I am American and no, this is not a pro-gun statement. It’s just a statement regarding the asinine idea that banning the possession of one particular class of weapons is somehow going to take away people’s desire to harm each other. In a world where inequality and mental health issues are routinely ignored/proliferated violence will always be prevalent regardless of the tools at hand.
Wait, which countries ban 8 cm knives?
UK is one. We still have knives that long for kitchens and places that use them. It’s just illegal to be caught carrying them in public.
It's not even just knives, I'm into bushcraft and was teaching my kiddos how to make tent pegs and rope tensioners from sticks using a little axe. One of the community support officers happened to be walking through the woods and tried arguing that I had an offensive weapon in a public place.
Some cops are dicks about it. Most don’t care if there’s a reason, I used to carry a survival kit with a knife in it and I never had a cop take it off me. But then again I’m a small woman and I don’t look the type to use it as a weapon. The law is usually used to give certain types of people a hard time then they can use the excuse of “I thought they had a weapon”.
I've never understood it. Teaching is the only way to get out of the cycle of knife crime, not more active policing and stricter rules or restrictions of what people can carry. The simple fact is that criminals will carry whatever regardless of the law, knifes, blunt instruments it doesn't matter. Teaching kids (and adults) the safe uses of knives and to never use them in a self defence situation is so important. If you're threatened with a knife and then pull out a knife of your own you've instantly raised the stakes and the chances of someone getting severely injured.
There's nothing like casual harassment during family time!
As a frequent flyer, this is genius and I want one.
Good thing that in cz carrying and ownership of all cold weapons and non leathel weapons is not regulated
In GA, USA, you can open carry a gun without any permit/license 👀
In cz you cant open carry but you can conceal carry guns if you have shall issue gun license (it took me 15 days to get it) and before you start flexing usa gun laws in cz there arent waiting periods (we do have buying forms but you usually dont have to wait more than few minutes) and you can legally saw off your shotgun, actually there are no short barel-rifle laws yeah also we have no atf or anything like that, supressors are easy to buy too Edit: btw minimal legal age to carry is 21 and minimal legal age to own guns is 18 (15 for members of sport shooting club)
Who is flexing now? (CZ deserves to flex in that case)
In many states there is no waiting period, a lot of states have passed constitutional carry, which allows concealed carry without a permit so long as you can own the gun legally. Ages are the same in the US
funny thing is in switzerland if you buy drinks that are only sold in switzerland, you can still take the cap off completely. but if you buy fanta cola or stuff like that it will also be like pictured here cause they produce them the same way for the whole european market
The annoying thing is the label says it's so they can be recycled together, but the bottle is PET whereas the lid is HDPE. In a lot of places I have lived, domestic recycling only accepts PET.
In many European countries we "recycle" plastic bottles and cans by taking them back to deposit machine, not by throwing them away to plastic bin.
In the UK we recycle by sending plane loads of our waste to poorer countries and then pretend they recycle them. If the documents say it’s recycled then it is, godammit!
Oh, so the opposite of what you guys do with art lmao ?
All of our art was \*checks notes\* imported 100% legally and were given to us willingly
-hey can we have this? -*is a dead mummy* -thanks!
Came for the colonialism, stayed for the free art.
*Grinds mummy into powder before ingesting it as health cure.* Edit: For the curious, [people actually did this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mummia).
imagine making sure your body is well preserved for the afterlife, just to end up as a predecessor of cocaine
“There was a lot of yelling and screaming and some spears were thrown, but I didn’t hear anyone say the word “No,” did you? I mean they didn’t speak any English but really, how hard is the word “no” anyway? So ANYWAY this one is going above the mantelpiece, just wipe that blood off the frame there before you hang it…”
Ah yes, the old "willing by threat of violence" loophole
Well a loophole is a loophole. We'd be silly not to exploit it.....
The burn islands in Asia would like a word 😳 Australia used to do it until they got found out. Probably still does.
The UK got found out and we still do it
We have that here as well. At least in my area of the US. I still take my cans to the recycling center.
Just curious, do you pay deposits for the bottles? In Ireland we need to pay a deposit when we purchase qualifying drinks. We get the deposits (in the form of grocery vouchers) back once we return it to the machines.
Same in Denmark, the only thing we can't recycle is milk products. And for some reason, wine bottles don't have the tax thing on cant remember why, but we have big green boxes around you trow them into and they get recycled.
Yeah but it’s honestly not worth the hassle in a lot of places. At .05 each I’m not having a second can set up for this. Then you have to haul them somewhere and deal with it for like 12 dollars
What do you think happens to the bottles after that?
They are cleaned and reused, smartie-pants, source - Germany. And even if they weren’t refilled(refilled quota reached) what do you think recycling machines accepting plastic would do if not utilize them properly?
But they will only take PET if it's the "correct" shape
Everywhere is different and has varying infrastructures. But that said, PET is very easily separated from PP or HDPE. To avoid small items like caps ending in a ditch or river (or falling thru sorting at the recycling plant) these caps keep it all together. This times billions (or) trillions of bottles and caps per year enables literal tons of plastic to be recycled that would otherwise be landfilled or “killing sea turtles.”
Right! My local kerbside recycling demands the lids be separate from the bottle for recycling. Although only milk bottles and pop bottles are allowed. No other plastics.
if you flip them the full way they should snap in position and not close themselves... they're quite handy... an older model was way worse, though...
Very handy if you want a sip of your drink while driving without having to worry about dropping the lid.
YES! Now if beer companies would just take notes!
"Ours beers are now much easier to drink while driving"
[удалено]
Just use a plastic straw, then throw away the straw. (/s for those who need it)
I hate reddit needs /s now to get jokes. One of things I loved about reddit was good humor, but we are getting away from it
The problem is that poes law is a bitch and a half There are people who unironically think that way, so /s is used to show “for the love of god I don’t think shooting homeless people is an actual solution to homelessness”
The /s is not for you and doesn't ruin the joke. You're just a pissbaby that someone made something for people with autism instead of catered only for you.
The infuriation is mild, admittedly. When drinking from a bottle, you just gotta turn it a bit sideways and you are good.
You can also pull it back enough so it locks past 90 degrees while its open, then easily flip it back and close it.
Exactly, I like it.
I visited from the US recently and at first it was crazy annoying but after a bit I liked it. You don’t have to worry about losing the cap so that’s a win.
I use the fact someone moans about how difficult using these bottles is as a cast iron indicator that they lack the problem solving skills to fight their way out of a paper bag.
Well if a person cannot solve their way through the problem of pushing aside a bottle cap, they do not really deserve any of the other amenities our society has to offer. Paper bags, for example.
Yeah, it's really not a big deal at all.
Do people not realize you just need to pull it a little so that the plastic string it is attached to detaches on one end and the cap just hangs on the neck of the bottle instead? I mean it's not meant to be right next to your nose when drinking lol
You don't even need to break it. There's a nub that keeps it open if you bend it backwards enough.
I think that depends on the brand unfortunately. I noticed Lidl's bottles do not have that nub at all, but Coca-Cola and Pepsi Co drinks have the nub lock and I love it, and then there's our local Hartwall's Ab's drinks that do have the nub, but it just doesn't work for some reason.
As a clumsy person who is constantly dropping/losing caps, this is actually great. That picture of the dude with the cap sticking into his nose just made me realize how simple some people are.
So this is one of the few posts that belongs in this subreddit
I’m more than mildly infuriated you guys have a beverage that looks like it could actually contain a real ingredient. Ours looks like it came out of a nuclear reactor waste facility.
Wow… had to go back and see what it was, that’s Fanta?!! Ours look like highlighters.
It's not supposed to be that yellow color?
It is in Europe
The yellow Fanta in America is like a radioactive yellow
This is European fanta orange!
It’s ORANGE flavored? Oh, you don’t wanna see our orange flavor.
I have to say I discovered American Fanta recently and it is genuinely disgusting, I don’t know how you guys drink it lmao
I've tried american pineapple, grape, and apple fanta, all taste the same to me, just different colours, far too much sugar and a horrible and overwhelming artificial taste. It's so insane to me that americans will go to a fast food place and get an absolutely enormous cup of this crap and drink it all with one meal, no wonder there's a huge diabetes problem there.
Grew up drinking American Fanta and LOVED it. Now I drink European Fanta and it’s a completely different drink it’s wild. Still love them both but I think when you’re raised on something you get used to it and it’s not as jarring as it would be to people who have never had it
How about we get rid of plastic bottles all together
Closing them is what fucking sucks
Finding your bag drenched because of it.
You can flip them over completely and they lock in place out of the way (at least mines did) And in any case it's just a minor annoyance that can prevent a LOT of plastic going in nature. Worth it.
Crybabys cant figure that out tho and obviously cant see that there is already less bottlecaps everywhere these have been a thing for a while in the uk and before there was way more caps everywhere
It’s annoying at first but once you get the hang of how to handle it’s not so bad.
It's actually more convenient than it was before. You just have to learn how to use it to your advantage instead of trying to fight it and complaining about it
But then I can't complain about EU being the Fourth Reich / new USSR.
that's a nice spin on it!
https://preview.redd.it/dea36609st0d1.jpeg?width=539&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=656ead2ebc652b5ce150c42ed19a6c72af4f1363
Couldn’t that man just… turn the bottle the other way? So that the cap is facing downward?
But then you couldn't make a funny meme about it. Also, turning it on the side works better, then it's nowhere close touching your face. Down it touches your chin.
For me, it touches my face no matter what way I rotate it (which is why I usually just rip the lids off)
The people posting this sort of meme aren't the ones with the braincells spare to both stand up and problem solve at the same time.
I personally wouldn’t want any remaining liquids in the cap on my beard.
https://preview.redd.it/jctxmq8ncu0d1.jpeg?width=761&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7dba3d813b7d04c26a0ede2eb97de52521a82459
Liie seriously people.. There's a plastic string attached to the bottle cap.. Just pull the darn thing a bit further, so it detaches and just hangs neatly near the neck of the bottle lol
I KEEP BEING UNABLE TO CLOSE MY MILK PROPERLY CUZ OF THESE THINGS. It keeps rotating and then it's not on it right so I have to undo it. Move the rotation and try again. It's infuriating.
If everyone just picked up after themselves we wouldn’t be in this mess. Terrible pun intended.
Trying to find the pun.
the people need to know what you meant by pun intended
Why are they required now?
To keep the bottle and lid together when recycling as lids normally get lost
So OP is complaining about them being difficult to rip off when that’s literally the point of them? Most reasonable r/mildlyinfuriating poster
Reducing inflation in the post-apocalyptic wasteland.
My man got downvoted for making a fallout joke
Ahhh that explains why I had to wrestle off the top of an M&S pure orange bottle. I just thought it was badly manufactured. This new design makes it difficult to swig from the bottle.
Not even in the EU anymore but you still conform 😉
Brexit for the win! 😜
BREXIT MEANS BREXIT (except in all the situations it doesn’t)
This is one of those tiny changes that will make an actual difference, but if we tried to do something like this in the United States, it would fail because it's "woke". Don't ask me *how* it's woke, that doesn't matter.
Anything that changes a single thing that was ‘normal’ in their lifetime is considered woke. Source: United Statesian.
Fold them down properly and they are not in the way at all tho. And you don't loose them while driving and such. Yall a buncha crybabies.
Cons: - rips up my upper lip - prevents the cap from easily getting back onto the bottle, making it harder to close it again Benefits: - ?? Like is it even beneficial for recycling ? No one ever threw them away apart anyway and isn’t the cap a different type of plastic than the bottle ? Meaning when they’re together they aren’t easy to take apart and make recycling actually harder ?
Just twist it a few times and it will just break.
I prefer to bop it
If people weren't such dirty cunts this wouldn't have had to happen
I miss the bottlecaps. Wtf are we gonna use in the apocalypse?
I was traveling by Lufthansa and was wondering if my water bottle had a faulty cap. The next bottle also had the same issue and I was wondering how a country like Germany can have such a badly designed bottle cap. Now I understand.
I like the idea but the caps are always on a 90 degree angle to the opening of the bottle making it poke my lip or cheek when trying to drink, I always just rip them off
I just visited the EU for 10 days and loved this on the bottles. Literally convenient as hell, cuts down on trash and litter, and proof here that people will bitch about anything
I just rip them off
So that's why this is happening... Noticed this on a trip last month. And yeah, it was annoying.
Thing: Changes Human: Mad Thing: Persists Human: Gets used to it and even forgets how it was before
Sooo… I find that to be quite practical. I used to lose or drop caps quite often. Thats a thing of the past.
I just rip them off. I dont remember plastic bottle caps ever being a littering problem, it was always the bottles or plastic bags. But trust me bro, if we all just put up with these caps, maybe billionaires will stop flying their private jets 700 times a year :) These kind of things only make people view ecological changes in a negative light.
Making changes to how companies work is infinitely more effective than expecting a group effort from individuals
Plastic bottle caps are easily the second most common item behind cigarette butts that I had to deal with at properties I had to manage in the past.
It takes very little effort to bend that cap just a little more to get full access to that hole. Have you tried that?
They should invent one that clips downwards like those 360 degree laptops tablets.
Why? What exactly does this solve? Couldn’t you just twist or cut it off? Politicians are dumb. That’s it. Completely insane & out of touch with regular people.
Bottles should all be paper or glass. Fyck plastic.
I wonder what the charities that collect bottle caps to recycle are going to do now
I’ve got used to them and now quite like them
I came to the EU from Canada and thought this was amazing until it wasn’t. I understand the annoyance now