Thoughts? I am currently trying to avoid using plastic packed drinks as much as possible due to it’s limited and finite recycle count
Aren’t aluminum cans still plastic bottles on the inside?
A standalone plastic bottle is 20-40g of PET.
The lining of a soda can is about 1g of BPA.
Isn’t “BPA-free” a selling point for food-safe plastic because BPA is bad?
Yes, but the problem is they replaced it with BPS which is basically the same, but less tested.
That’s like saying cars and trucks are made of paint because they have a layer of it on the outside.
Can liners are both an extremely small portion of the overall container as well as being absolutely essential for most canned beverages.
Additionally, many/most manufacturers have or are moving away from liner materials that contain BPA.
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).That’s nice but aluminum is not the only option.
There’s tin and glass that could be used for several things.
You mean, if it gets recycled.
Right, 90%-ish of it never gets recycled at all, and the stuff that does can only go through the process a handful of times before it’s unusable.
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.
The question of chemicals leeching from plastic into food has been studied and largely solved.
You know cans are just plastic sacs using the tin/aluminum for structure right?
Very little plastic, which burns when they recycle the cans
Yes it burns. Just like the plastic bottle do when put into the incinerator.
There must be more to it than this. As a Dr. Pepper connoisseur I can tell you that Dr. Pepper from a can tastes far superior than from a bottle.
It’s a different type of plastic because it doesn’t need to be structural. Plastic bottles use PET, cans use a variety but I’m commonly seeing BPA.
It’s a different type of plastic, AFAIK it’s like a spray on polymer for the aluminum cans; But I think the biggest factor is probably UV degradation of the ingredients in the soda with the clear plastic 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.
Moscow Mules are served in copper mugs
…which ideally are not copper on the inside to prevent copper from leaching into the acidic beverage you’re drinking.
That says more about the taste of Dr Pepper than it does about the cans 😂
That’s just one example. Back when I still drank soda, I’d take a coke, pepsi, or mt dew in a can over a bottle any day for the same reason.
That’s pretty disingenuous, considering the amounts of respective materials involved.
By that rationale, your home is made of paint. It just uses wood and concrete for structure.
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.
We don’t recycle enough
Maybe if recycling wasn’t a massive joke it might be useful and people might embrace it.
The reality is no matter how much effort you put into recycling it’s going to a landfill or incinerator.
“Recycling” outside of glass bottles is essentially non existent.
The answer is to stop producing plastic.
The majority of the aluminum in circulation in the US is recycled. It’s significantly more than even glass and paper. The reason is because it’s much cheaper to use recycled aluminum than raw.
But you’re right when it comes to plastic.
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.
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.
Do you have any sources for this fairly common naturally occurring
biologically important, and in human uses bioinert metal causing “light metal poisoning” from either natural background doses or incidental from human pollution?I don’t want acute poisoning, specifically sources on chronic background doses.
Since when is aluminium biologically important? I’m under the impression that humans (and other life?) do not need aluminium at all.
Having said that, my info is that it’s nothing to worry about. It is very common in food (naturally and since forever), and the body can get rid of it, and they haven’t been able to show adverse effects except in very very high doses. That’s the messaging I’ve been seeing anyway.
You’re in fact right, I was hedging a bet that the abundance of aluminum meant it’d be used by some random metabolic processes somewhere, which it probably is, but still none found.
So they disproved the aluminium-alzheimers link? I knew it was Just Fine to make the instant coffee from the water used to boil the meal packets.
This sounds like one of those Facebook facts…
As others have said, source?
Aluminum is the fifth most common element on Earth, and is naturally present in pretty large quantities in soil.
Are you sure you aren’t confusing it with lead?
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.
Someone needs to invent amorphous silicon with weak bonds and call it “glasstic”
you are a good person
You do realize that aluminum bottles are plastic bottles yes ? Plastic bottle with a thin aluminium insert to block sunlight from degrading the contents.
ok maybe so but this makes op pretty good
I am currently trying to avoid using plastic packed drinks as much as possible due to it’s limited and finite recycle count
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.
Huh guess I like aluminum. I think soda from cans is far better than plastic
Cans transfer heat better too, so you feel the cold in your hand as you drink.
I know a lot of people who prefer Pepsi out of a tin. I know I definitely prefer coke (cola) out of a tin.
I think I would agree although I don’t really like cola. The can adds a tang which works with it.
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.
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.
foul: -5 points, extra letter/syllable
in the US, it’s spelled ‘aluminum’
That’s enough from you, gregorium.
Aloomineeum
