On a local level, it’s one less thing to clutter the streets with, though.
I don’t really see it through a “save the planet” lens, more to find ways of keeping the local environment a bit cleaner/tidier/healthier. Here at least there are loads of recycling depots, public bins, dog poo bins, etc., so the mess isn’t bad at all. Maybe other spots around Europe need little steps here and there to tidy stuff up.
Now, if only they could find a way of attaching ciggie butts to the ciggie…
We spend ~75% of our time in CH, but a lot of our shopping is still done at the Intermarche just over the border in France. Closer and cheaper (as is the French diesel for the Landrover).
So yeah, we get more of them than you might, but it seems that’s likely to change. Already seeing some, like the cartons of juice/nectar I bought at Lidl Swiss a couple of weeks ago. And no, you can’t just ‘swivel’ the top out of the way, either they’re scratching your nose or leaving drips on your cheeks or chin.
Our French milk comes in non-PET plastic bottles. No idea if that makes them better or worse, but in any case they’ve had these new tops for at least a few months now, possibly more…
There’s an interesting article here about the EU’s plan to have all member countries introduce PET bottle deposit schemes like in Germany.
Rather than reduce use of PET bottles (by deterrence due to the higher price, use has actually gone up which wasn’t the plan:
This effect has already been seen in Germany. A law passed in 2003 aimed to reduce single-use containers to 20 percent of the market, but the opposite has happened: single-use plastic bottles now account for 71 percent of the market compared with 40 percent a decade ago, according to a 2021 University of Halle-Wittenberg study. “It seems that the introduction of a single-use deposit system promotes a narrow mode of thinking and a focus on recycling, which hinders the revitalisation of multi-use BC (beverage container) systems,” the authors found.
I’ve only bought two PET bottles of water in two years (and they weren’t for me) but freely available tap/fountain water has enabled this .
That’s the green solution and not recycling.
Is street litter really a problem anywhere in CH? I’m not often in the big cities, but I’ve not noticed any increase since the time that I used to be. And who would throw the caps away separately anyway?
Nobody, of course. This is why I said that this is a solution looking for a problem.
I was referring to “Europe” really, and just in a general way. Agree that Switzerland is pretty tidy, as I mentioned in my post. It was really in response that these so-called “green/save the planet” initiatives aren’t solely about saving the whales or polar bears or bees or whatever but can also be seen as just generally keeping your own local area clean and tidy. Why wouldn’t people want more recycling facilities or bins or clean-teams to pull trolleys out of the river or whatever?
I just find that as soon as something is put in place which is vaguely “eco-friendly” people get all jumpy that they are suddenly over-burdened with “saving the planet” when collectively they’re just doing lots of wee-micro-tiny actions to stop the place looking like a shithole… 
Loose caps have been banned as part of a larger plan to tackle plastic waste in Europe.
The bloc says that they are one of the most littered single-use plastic products on beaches.
Went down the google rabbit hole. 
It seems to me that, notwithstanding moves to reduce plastic use in general, resources ould better be spent educating, training, if you prefer, people to not throw their litter anywhere except allocated recycling bins/boxes/collections. These silly tops are still not going to reduce the amount of bottles dropped on the street or wherever else they put them that they end up on the beaches. Why is it so difficult to get people to just Not Drop Litter?
This apparently is the answer to everything these days - the problem is it just doesn’t work*
Obesity is growing yet the answer given by everyone seems to be that people need educating which to me is nonsense as it’s pretty clear nowadays to every<one through the media that eating mountains of junk food and drinking buckets of sugary drinks will generally make you obese.
(There’s an addictive element here though).
People still smoke even though it’s quite clear that if you smoke, you are quite likely to have a horrible death. (and people continue to start smoking too so it’s not just an addiction thing).
In the UK, extra taxes on sugary drinks have been shown to reduce consumption.
So, for PET, we don’t need educating, we just need alternatives so we can ditch (probably the wrong word) the PET bottle culture.
A few weeks back, as I was waiting for our bus, I saw a couple of teens open their coke plastic bottles and then throw the tops at the waste bin. They both missed. After a minute or soI asked them if they weren’t going to pick them up. The response was, no. That guy from the village would do it.
I shook my head and picked up their caps and put them in my pocket for our plastic recycling.
Just charge companies a €1 per bottle charge and they will quickly come up with solutions.
They’ll come up with solutions that will maximise their profits and do nothing to reduce PET consumption.
People mock the EU laws but getting manufacturers to come up with solutions is never a good idea.
Funny, the one time I came accross it so far was on orange juice and the second thing I thought (right after “what the heck”) was “now that should stop people drinking from the bottle” 
Yes of course I drink from the little pet bottles but I HATE it, when people drink from shared bottles in the fridge. Maybe you ask your family? The wife, kids usually are happy to have a dad who does that.
This.
But I don’t know about the European habits. In Switzerland it’s not the law and not necessary, too used to “Luft raus, Deckel drauf” and we only will have to put up with it because Swiss market for packing industry is too small. We’ll get used to it.
I buy my milk in tetra, got a plastic lid. If they do it on those I will definitely cut it off. But fear not, I treat them the same: “Luft raus und Deckel drauf” and I bring them in for recycling. It’s just what we do here 
Fully agree. Only trouble is, they will pass those costs on to the end-user.
PET has to go. Everyone knows that, instead it has increased.
I am surprised people in CH buys milk from carton/tetrapak and not directly from a Milchautomat at the farm 
The queue is too long.
Actually when I was a child I was sent to the “Milchhütte” (the milk house where the farmers delivered the milk to in the evenings) with a milk-kettle every evening (which was great, I was officially allowed out of the house longer and yes, the task too me loooong). While you lazy b*** had it the milk delivered to the door in glass bottles. jealousy talking
Then we had a case of salmonella in town and temporarily all had to switch to tetra. We never switched back.
It would fit the picture but it’s actually not a very Swiss thing anymore to get milk from the farm. It’s more the thing of … let’s not get into that 
Me, when I first moved here. 
It was drilled into me as a child that the caps aren’t the same type of plastic and “can’t be recycled together”. Even the images I saw seemed to confirm that the cap does NOT go on the bottle:
It is only recently that I’ve seen changes with milk bottles. For years, the signs on the recycling containers showed only clear PET bottles as going in the PET container, and milk was on the picture with laundry soap bottles. Apparently new plastics are being used for milk bottles, which is why some of them can now go in with PET.
PET-Umstellung bei Milchflaschen führt zu Kuriosität bei Recycling | Tages-Anzeiger (paywall, but you get the idea)
Y’all should drink more beer. Crown corks are still untethered, even in the EU.
I don’t know the word in any language for the wire, white ceramic and orange o-ring thingy that keeps beers closed and make a pop sound when you open it. This thing is tethered to the bottle and no prob at all.