Will Tethered Bottle Caps Open a New Front in America’s Culture Wars?

Tethered caps for all plastic bottles as much as three liters (or roughly 100 fluid ounces), mandated in Europe since final summer season, aren’t required within the US simply but.

However given California’s curiosity in dramatically lowering plastic air pollution — and the choice of California-based Crystal Geyser so as to add tethered caps to its 8-ounce water bottles — the prospect of shopper rules requiring connected bottle caps may quickly bubble up in America’s contentious cultural debates.

Certainly, had been it not for opposition from the beverage trade, California would have already got permitted and applied a tethered-cap requirement in 2018.

Earlier than the info about tethered caps are smothered by the anticipated punditry, right here’s a fast abstract of the European Union’s regulatory intentions and their penalties to date.

What are tethered caps and the way do they work?

Merely put, tethered caps are those who stay connected to a plastic bottle after being unscrewed. The trick is within the cap’s design. Within the instance pictured beneath proper, quite than separating utterly from the round plastic band atop the bottle, the cap stays linked to a filament that partially separates from the band itself because the cap is unscrewed. The cap can then be…