Milk bottles, cream, some fruit juices and other drinks. Some of these are more commonly packed in cardboard in CH, but we’re always to-ing and fro-ing between there and France, so I notice them perhaps more than some might. French milk in plastic bottles, for example, unless you go for the UHT, which inexplicably still seems to make up the vast majority of milk that the French buy.
Oh that I can verify. Old people, hardly able to walk scratching around in the waste and some bins in a dystopian view of good intentions have holders for the cans and bottles.
I was not aware that CH did not have deposits on bottles and cans.
This has to be the apex of First World Problems.
3 Likes
It was the same in Belgium with some of the glass bottles. Not all of them had it so it was quite confusing and some people just didn’t bother sorting them:
There was no deposit on cans or plastic but you could often see older people fishing in the bottle banks for the bottles with refunds on them. Some of them had quite elaborate fishing devices.
Places like Venice have tried to reduce the problem of PET recycling (and dumping) by installing free drinking water taps around the city.
Other cities are following suit.
It shouldn’t even be a problem in Switzerland and I could never understand why people bought bottles of still water here with so many fountains around from which to get fresh cool water.
2 Likes
I know I shouldn’t judge because I don’t know the full story but people seem to buy multi-packs of 1.5l bottled water as part of their weekly shop. Why, when the tap water is totally fine and top quality?
Maybe topping up their bunker room rations? 
2 Likes
I never understood that either. I’d really like to ask one of them and I know it’s none of my business.
The amount of fossil fuels used to transfer these packs from bottlers, to warehouses, to stores and then people’s houses can’t be negligible
Perhaps someone on here does the same so can explain why they feel the need to buy bottled water like that.
But then I could ask who has been bought into the vitamin water con too?
We see it very occasionally with families arriving for the week laden down with cases of water. French, usually, which is consistent with what I’ve seen over the years in supermarkets too. I do recall on my first visit to France back in the 1970s that bottled water was considered the norm for drinking, so I wonder whether the water quality back then was poor and the cultural memory has hung on to that idea.
Thinking about it, the water at our house in Alsace has had warnings in the past - like ten or fifteen years - due to high levels of farm chemicals, and it is very hard, so we always filter it for drinking and cooking use, so to a certain extent I can see the justification.
And then I think what happens is that people growing up with a certain idea of what’s normal simply don’t question it - its what they’ve always done, so why change?
Also worth pointing out that IME the people using it all the time like that tend to go for the cheapest non-branded water - the expensive stuff used for table purposes only is a different market altogether, I think.
Even in Switzerland there are places where you shouldn’t drink the tap water but they are few and far between. I suppose some people may live off-the-beaten track or have a weekend home in the wilds without decent drinking water.
If it were me, I’d knock up a filter/purification system and have a tap in the kitchen for that.
Are those who buy pallets of water perhaps of Muslim persuasion?
Then it may be because tap water is not regarded as Halal in CH. Something to do with freshwater shrimps being used in the filtering g system.
And before you ask… I asked.
As a kefir drinker, I dislike these new caps, as you are assured to get some drops on the shirt.
So I cut off the cap. Or use a glass 
I recall around 20 years ago visiting some friends of ours used to have a little chalet just up from Abondance (about 15 km across the French border from Morgins) whose water supply was from a spring/stream coming down from the mountain through a forested area. So no farm run-off, I guess.
Whether they used it for drinking or cooking I misremember, but yeah, places like that still exist.
Shouldn’t be a problem, but it seems that the SBB likes to hide the water fountains. And I don’t like filling a water bottle from the tap in the bathroom in the station.
The SBB has bathrooms? What will they think of next? Do they provide the towel or do you have to bring your own? 
All kidding aside seeing as they are charging CHF2 for use of their toilets I can see why you don’t want to fill up there.
I have no educated view on the issue, but it is rather obvious that this PwC study has been produced at the behest of the beverage industry.
The food and beverage industry is fighting hard against the coming EU packaging regulations. My guess is that the industry wants to avoid any meaningful regulation and the EU is likely to overregulate and create cost - instead of reducing packaging, waste and emissions.
They could do it in a simple sentence. “All retailers are required to accept all packaging returned by their customers and recycle or reuse it efficiently“ plus “failure to comply will incur a penalty of €1,000 per piece of packaging.
Then the retailers would pressure the manufacturers to do away with their waste.
The world was making more sense when you were proudly ignoring me.
Affordable luxury. Marketing makes it look like the rich consume like this. Unsurprisingly, the product is not luxurious at all. The supermarket is full of those products.
To follow up on this exciting subject: I have just had an Evian water from a 0.5l bottle. They seem to have improved the tethered cap remarkably so that it does not just loosely hangs and moves around. It now folds back and essentially locks in. Very easy to use and actually better than having to hold the cap.
I still have not heard back from the planet whether they are feeling an effect already. But I feel much better now.
3 Likes
There is that argument that people use - whatever they do will have absolutely no effect on a global scale so why should they bother.
That’s why we need regulations and laws.
It’s not the planet in this case but animals on land, in the air, and the sea which will benefit.
It’s like the plastic holders for six-pack tins of beer - illegal now but there was a time when many wild and domestic animals got entrapped in them and ended up with a painful death from strangulation.
3 Likes