Asklemmy

FYI; cans are plastic lined.

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.

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).

Obligatory Engineer Guy video about the can.

Aren't aluminum cans still plastic bottles on the inside?

You mean, if it gets recycled.

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.

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.

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.

You know cans are just plastic sacs using the tin/aluminum for structure right?

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.

I refuse to buy mineral water because of this. Only in emergency mode.

I always carry my reusable bottle (Tupperware) wherever I go.

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.

If you're talking about the US, then you have to spell it the way we spell it.

Do you mean in things like plastic water bottles or other beverage containers like plastic bottles containing soda?

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.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xIVONw9Pr4w

you are a good person

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?