Fixed—or, tethered—plastic bottle lids inconvenience consumers, place additional costs on producers and, to cap it all off, fail to meet the expectations of their ‘green’ enforcers.
This last point is the finding of a new Swedish report which claims there has been an increase in the number of plastic caps polluting beaches along the country’s West Coast for the first time in years. And that’s just 10 months after Brussels introduced legislation banning the sale of plastic bottles without tethered lids.
The report, cited in Aftonbladet, points to a recent tripling in the number of plastic bottle lids found on West Coast beaches. One official from the Keep Sweden Clean foundation said this is in part due to rubbish washing up from other countries, but added that
People get irritated by the caps that are left on the bottle and actually tear them off.
Beach cleaner Dag Jönsson also told Sweden’s Sveriges Radio that consumer irritation is a contributing factor.
Swedish analyst Rune Andersen said this finding should come as no surprise, given the measure was clearly introduced as “an exercise in bureaucratic self-affirmation” rather than to achieve any serious environmental effect. He added that while fixed caps do not solve the litter issue, they do make European products both more complicated and more expensive.
Nevertheless, it is treated as an ‘environmental victory’ because it looks good in the media, costs little politically … [and] gives the feeling of progress.
European soft drinks industry associationrepresenter UNESDA also reported before the legislation was put into effect that the tethered lids mandate “could create between 50,000 to 200,000 tonnes more plastic; create additional CO2 equivalent of 58 to 381 million kg and an economic cost of at least €2.7 billion.”
Like many others, this European Union standard is also applied in the UK despite Brexit.
