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Coca-Cola most common source of packaging pollution on UK beaches: study
- andrewshadura 7y ago…on UK beaches.
- mooneater 7y agoEven with zero packaging, their product is addictive poison. Buffett has spoken proudly of how, normally the human body would not be able to drink that much sugar without getting immediately sick, but the coke formula overcomes that sugar overload response. Disgusting.
- tapland 7y agoIt's the same as any other soda, squash, juice etc.
- maxxxxx 7y agoThat’s actually something I have been thinking about. How do they get so much sugar into a drink? You could never produce something drinkable with this amount of sugar.
- hombre_fatal 7y agoA quick search shows that juices are at least as sugary if not moreso, especially grape juice. I live next to a shop that squeezes fresh juice, but I mix it with at least three parts carbonated water. Otherwise it's such an easy way to overconsume calories. And possibly the least fulfilling way, as well.
- rorykoehler 7y agoFruit juice is actually nutritious though. What nutrients are you getting from a can of coke?
- forgotmypw3 7y agoOne can of coke provides 75% RDV for monsantium and 66% RDV corn syrup.
- tapland 7y agoSugar is very soluble? It's not at all hard and as prviously stated, fruit juices contain at least as much sugars naturally.
- beenBoutIT 7y agoIn the US we get our sugar from high fructose corn syrup unless we spend more to buy the imported Mexican Coke that's made with real cane sugar.
- reaperducer 7y agoIn the US we get our sugar from high fructose corn syrup unless we spend more to buy the imported Mexican Coke that's made with real cane sugar. When I lived in Seattle, I always found it amusing that soccer moms would brag about buying Mexican Coke at Whole Foods like it was something special. They could just drive an hour north and buy Canadian Coke, which is also made with sugar, for half the price!
- Nition 7y agoSurely not really half the price if you can buy one locally, and have to drive two hours there and back for the other.
- maxxxxx 7y agoFrom my calculations a can of coke has 12 teaspoons of sugar. That seems almost undrinkably sweet.
- reaperducer 7y agoSugar is very soluble? This is true. That's why in baking, sugar is considered a liquid, not a solid.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- VirtualAirwaves 7y agoWhat does this have to do with trash?
- dev_north_east 7y agoWhat about Coke Zero?
- youeseh 7y agoWhy don't more drinks come in reusable glassware and milk crates? Are single use cans and cardboard packages cheaper? Safer?
- maxxxxx 7y ago“Convenience”
- SSchick 7y agoCheaper to produce, cheaper to transport and generally favoured by consumers due to weight and easy disposal.
- tapland 7y agoBecause reusable usually means crushing the class and making new bottles. Recycled aluminium saves more energy than the glass process.
- MivLives 7y agoThey're talking about returnables which is how beer used to come. Imagine instead of just recycling your beer bottles you hauled it back to the store for it to be sent back to vendor. I've worked around refillable milk containers and it was a pain in the ass, beer I can only imagine is more so.
- tapland 7y agoIt would be absolutely nuts if anyone wanted to use non-standard bottles or specific glass colorings. A standardized bottle that everyone used (only label as differentiation) would be cool.
- sameOld_sameOld 7y agoRemember the McDonald's styrofoam crisis of the 1980's? https://www.nytimes.com/1987/11/11/nyregion/mcdonald-s-is-urged-to-alter-packaging.html https://www.nytimes.com/1987/11/11/nyregion/mcdonald-s-is-ur...
- jdavis703 7y agoThe beverage industry knows they have a festering PR problem. I recently got a random poll from the American Beverage Association. They were primarily interested in understanding how people feel about the industry’s sustainability (or lack thereof). The good news is based on some of the questions they asked it sounds like they’re considering bringing back glass containers.
- darkpuma 7y agoI hope they do, it would be a huge boon to sea glass enthusiasts.
- SteveGerencser 7y agoThe survey found that 10 companies were responsible for more than half of the identifiably branded rubbish found on the UK’s beaches." But are they? Isn't this shifting the blame from the end user that improperly disposes of their trash to the company? Sure, they could do more to reduce packaging issues, but in the end, it is the consumer that is tossing these things out rather than recycling them.
- AYBABTME 7y agoIf you develop an app, and everybody using your app always ends up deleting their data by clicking on the wrong button, and then people complain that your app loses data... ...in the end, the users are wrong in the moment, but the real problem is that your app allows a behavior that has negative outcomes, and the proper fix isn't to educate people, but to make it impossible for people to click that delete button so easily, or maybe make the deletion recoverable. Maybe the users of coca-cola bottles are the problem, but maybe coca-cola should be made to not make products that have a propensity to be misused.
- chapium 7y agoOn the otherhand I have tons of first hand experience with bottles, and its a very simple task to take care of your own trash. Its just a matter of doing it.
- forgotmypw3 7y agoWhat do you mean by "take care of"? Carrying it to the trash can? What happens to it after that? Oh, I guess it's not your problem anymore...
- josefx 7y agoWent with cowerkers hiking once, we had more than enough to drink with us. What we didn't plan on was a convenient way to carry the bottles, so around half way to our target we had to rest and decide what to do with them. Either leave them there and collect them on the way back or accept that they will be a pain to carry around for the rest of the day. We later found a place where we could drop them off, but getting there was far from just "doing it". Lesson learned: plan ahead and get something convenient to carry.
- m3nu 7y agoJust spent 2 weeks on Sabah, Borneo. Even the very remote beaches hours away from large human settlements are littered with plastic bottles and grocery bags. While diving you often see bags floating around. Both, on the surface and below. Ironically even the island hopping boat carried a tray of bottled water for anyone to take. Not sure what % of bottles gets left behind at the end of the day. Maybe a small deposit on each bottle would help to essentially pay people to collect them.
- siedes 7y agoA small deposit is no incentive. Now if it were a significant amount like $.50-$1.00 per bottle you recycle, then you'd have people literally racing to get those bottles. Then just increase the price on the drinks itself by a bit to make up for that, which is also a disincentive to discourage a number of people from buying them in the first place.
- jerrysievert 7y agooregon has 90% redemption rate[1] at 10 cents per bottle, so there is obviously some incentive. 1. https://www.opb.org/news/article/oregon-bottle-deposit-redemption-rate-2018/ https://www.opb.org/news/article/oregon-bottle-deposit-redem...
- saagarjha 7y agoI don't think this is the whole story, since as far as I'm aware the only people who get the redemption are people who put very low value on their time because it's inconvenient to actually redeem bottles.
- dijit 7y ago"Pant"[0] is very common across most of northern europe- what you tend to find is that people will pilfer public trash cans to get bottles and cans to dispense, in Sweden where I live it's 1kr (or 10c in USD) for a can or small bottle, and large bottles being 2kr. Not everyone is so fortunate to have gainful employment, especially not as gainful as the normal user of this site. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container-deposit_legislation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container-deposit_legislation
- theabsurdman 7y agoGood read about how, as far back as the 50's, the beverage industry used the "Keep America Beautiful" campaign to shift blame and responsibility for pollution onto consumers: https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-perspec-indian-crying-environment-ads-pollution-1123-20171113-story.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-perspec...
- judge2020 7y agoI wouldn't be surprised if the "#trashtag" movement from earlier this year was created and spread by beverage companies.
- sara7262 7y agoEven you can't believe there is a hen in world's biggest animals See the video how they looks and what they do https://cutt.ly/1rOU7Q https://cutt.ly/1rOU7Q Very funny dog using toilet Try to control your laugh http://bit.ly/2LVSNSG http://bit.ly/2LVSNSG Cute dog doing exercise like humans http://bit.ly/2Jq3rz1 http://bit.ly/2Jq3rz1
- PorterDuff 7y agoThat's an interesting article. I remember that years ago a project at the University of Arizona was doing archaeological work on landfills. It turned out that surprising amount of the non-degrading material found once you dug down a bit was telephone books.
- PorterDuff 7y agoHang on, here you go. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tucson_Garbage_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tucson_Garbage_Project
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y agonewspapers dumped in landfills as much as over half a century ago, turn up again as fresh and as readable as the day they were issued. Amazing. I imagine if the paper were shredded and mixed with organic matter it might brake down more rapidly, but layered and trapped away underground evidently not.
- makomk 7y agoWell, that's certainly one method of carbon sequestration...
- flyGuyOnTheSly 7y agoThank goodness. Finally, somebody with some clout is pointing fingers at the largest contributor to garbage... the corporations who produce it. I live in Canada and Tim Horton's cups literally litter every street corner in every big city in our country. I have always thought that they should be responsible for the cleanup of those cups. It is absolutely their fault that their customers are throwing their products onto our ground. Why should our overburdened local governments carry the cost of picking up a profitable business' garbage?
- dd36 7y agoProducer responsibility is a well-studied economic concept. It’s a shame progress like that halted a long time ago.
- briandear 7y agoShouldn’t the consumer be responsible for throwing their trash away properly? The local government is a government of the local people: if the people would stop throwing stuff on the ground, there wouldn’t be so much trash to pick up. That burden is created by the local people. Should paint companies be held responsible for graffiti?
- microcolonel 7y agoThis is the HN state of mind, where the other is responsible for 100% of the world's problems, and individuals are completely ruled by passion and reptilian instinct.
- dang 7y agoCould you please stop posting unsubstantive flamebait to HN so we don't have to ban you again? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- ethbro 7y agoYes. But unfortunately, it's infeasible to penalize them directly. And the panopticon required to do so would cause more harm than benefit. Ergo, we target upstream as the least bad solution.
- DrOctagon 7y agoWhy can't we just go to 100% aluminium for beverage packaging? The technology and supply chains etc. are already in place.
- reaperducer 7y agoI'm OK with this. Or even glass. According to the interwebs, it wasn't until the 1960's that plastic bottles became popular in the United States, but I don't remember them until the early 80's. Before then, soda always came in cans with pull-tabs that would slice your toes open at the beach.
- MivLives 7y agoAs someone who has worked in the beverage industry. Please don't bring back glass. It's so heavy, it's fragile, and it don't stack efficiently. Beer is finally moving to cans a change which has only happened in the last few years. It's easier to move and store, a twelve oz can takes up about 3/5s the space of a 12oz bottle.
- haylel 7y agoI think the aluminium cans have a thin plastic or polymer coating on the inside too, which stops the drink from tasting like metal... so not sure if it's 100% plastic free either.
- elFarto 7y agoThey do have a liner, here's a video of someone removing the can from the coke: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1pB6O6AYMU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1pB6O6AYMU
- andrewstuart 7y agoI noticed the other day that garbage is everywhere - and it's pretty much ALL packaging of one form or another.
- musgrove 7y agoTechnically, Coca-Cola consumers are the most common source of packaging pollution on UK beaches. That's a lot different than what the title states. Since Coca-cola is the largest seller of beverages in containers, it only is common sense that would be true. But hey, blame Coke. Let's blame the ocean for people drowning as well, or the local utilities for people being electrocuted or gravity for people falling to their death.
- sydd 7y agoThis is the same philosophy that led to the bank crysis in 2009. Banks were saying that it's not their fault; rather the government was at fault with its lax regulations.
- djmips 7y agoDo you really think you are going to solve this by training all the individual people responsible for litter?
- dev_dull 7y agoI was a little surprised when traveling in India the first time and I got a soda. They expect you to wait and give them back the glass bottle once you’re done. This was at a local stand, of course there’s plastic bottles elsewhere. At first it felt weird, but then I realized how much better it is for everyone and for the environment to reuse glass bottles. The bottles are washed and reused and even if they ended up in the ocean, we’ll, the world was none the worst for it. It made me sad we moved away from this. I’d love to see glass used more often again for drinks.
- redorb 7y ago20k identifiable pieces of trash, small sample size. Even if it's good math ~ perhaps its a numbers game of popularity in brands? Coke was 15% Pepsi 10% ... and I'm sure other brands of aluminum can waste we're their proportional share..
- darkFunction 7y agoA lot of discussion on this thread revolves around whose responsibility it is to ensure clean-up of plastic waste (producers or consumers) while ignoring the fact that companies are using a material that lasts 10,000 years for items that are single-use. That should be outright illegal unless there are literally no alternatives.
- chewz 7y agoOverconsumption should be illegal. What if every person had been issued a certain limited credit amount for a lifetime? And then they can decide what to do: - drink from plastic bottles - have children - have a personal car - wear cotton t-shirts - go some retail therapy - have a large lawn - fly to exotic vacations - ... The list continues....
- zygimantasdev 7y agothis would fit perfectly in socialist country. Want toiler paper? get papers and wait in line
- scotty79 7y agoWhat if this credit could be not equal for everybody but adjusted by how useful persons contributions are for other people? It could be dynamic! Wait, we already have that. It's called money and doesn't help all that much for polution from single use, forever trash items. Maybe they are just priced wrong? I think if government just cleaned up the oceans and sent bill to Coca-Cola for each bottle, market would solve things fairly quickly.
- RobertRoberts 7y agoIs it really debatable about "who" left the garbage on the ground? Even if something only lasts a couple years, do we still want biodegrading trash littering everything? (we have raw food products right now, I wouldn't want those on the beach either...)
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
- jimmaswell 7y agoHow about "Litterers most common source of pollution on beaches"?
- resters 7y agoThe negative externalities of Warren Buffet's fortune are truly cataclysmic for the environment.
- jimnotgym 7y agoCoke still tastes better from glass bottles. Glass bottles are reuseable. Hang on, why not use glass?
- Proven 7y agoSo what? They maybe a source of packaging but they aren’t the source of pollution.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]