Slashdot Mirror
Friendly Plastic Pop Can Nearly Ready for Market
drfishy writes "BevNET has the story of Toledo, OH based Owens-Illinois and their new pop can. The can is made of a "fancy" new clear plastic with a traditional aluminum top and should be in stores sometime this year. Consumers are supposed to like it because of the "cool" factor, manufacturers will like it because they can use the same equipment to fill and package them, beverage companies like it because consumers and manufacturers will, and advertising agencies love it because they can get rich making all new commercials to convince people it really is cool. Seriously though, I like the idea, enough to submit a story about it anyway..."
What the hell is pop? I think you mean soda, or maybe coke, but certainly not pop.
Obligatory link: http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~almccon/pop_soda/
rooooar
Great! Another reason to add more and more garish artifical colors to my sugar water.
Gimme some more o' dat green "Romulan Ale"!
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
They declared bankrupcy after a huge loss in a class-action asbestos lawsuit. Then they went on to simply not pay many small design firms they owed money to. Pretty much puta few of them out of business. It was right around Christmas time too.
Anyone think they'll pay these firms pay after plastic pop cans become all the rage? Yeah, me neither...
Cloud City Digital: DVD Production at its cheapest/finest
This can may be new to the market, but it's not a new design. I held a prototype of this exact can (plastic body, aluminum top) while visiting a friend that worked at a 7UP plant back in the early 1980s, twenty years ago. The can was clear green plastic with the 7UP paint job. It was empty, but sealed.
how do you crush it on your forhead? A plasticy plunk is nowhere near as manishly satifying as the savory crash and pang of sweet, metallic destruction...
-- Insert wisdom here:
How do the recycling folks like it? What's the number in the little triangle? I suppose they'll have to separate the top from the body to recycle it at all. Gotta love that!
Rank comments and posts against each other at We-Rank.com
Right now aluminum cans are recycled by many people because they bring a decent price and there are many places they can be sold. But plastic? As far as I know, there's no money to be made by an individual in recycling plastic and if there is, I doubt it's as much as aluminum.
Check out AbiWord.
I was drinking out of these cans years ago (like 5 years). Yes, they looked somewhat "cool" becuase of the clear body, but they seemed to have disappeared. Was it becuase the contents tasted like crap? Packaging by itself isn't enough to make a successful product.
Reliable, Great Value Hosting: $7.95/mo 2.4G/120G
Before the soda connoisseurs get on here and try to tell us they're not gonna like these because the soda from the metal cans tastes better than the soda from the plastic bottles, keep in mind the aluminum cans' interiors are coated with some sort of plastic material.
Otherwise the carbonic acid would react with the aluminum, and leave you with a nasty taste (I believe due to Aluminum Oxide? but its been a while since high school Chemistry).
"And like that
this?
I remember these transparent plastic cans with standard aluminium top at least ten years ago, selling here in the UK.
AFAICR, the drink itself was foul.
At least I hope Slashdot collected some money for the headline. If not, they're bigger suckers than those of us who read the article.
Does this mean this can will keep my drink cool at all times?
Or am I just expecting too much?
Well, technically you can separate the aluminum from the plastic, but no consumer is going to take the time to do that - most people are still too lazy to take the screw caps off their plastic pop bottles before throwing them in the bin - and there is no way that it will be financially feasible for recycling companies to separate the aluminum from plastic themselves.
Personally, this idea pisses me off enough to keep me from purchasing ever again from companies that bottle their beverages in these cans.
I have to disagree, the topic is, as they say, on.
In Japan, you can buy bottles made completely out of aluminum. It's an aluminum can narrowing into a neck at the top with a traditional metal twist-off cap, and it's got a sticker around it which looks much like the decoration on a standard Coke can.
here's the prior-art non-patent application:
Method for making recycleable transparent beverage containers
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
If the stupidity or laziness of a few makes the efforts of everyone else useless (they still have to pass them under a magnet), then the industrious and smart people should rebel and pretend they're stupid to send a message that thier time and efforts are being wasted.
I'm sure technology has advanced sufficiently from when the following happened to prevent it, since it was over 10 years ago, but this is why I bet they still have to pass all the cans under a magnet:
When I was in high school I worked in the kitchen periodically (we all had to rotate through cleanup duty). We had a recycling program run by our trash collection service. They provided statistics for us comparing what percentage (by weight and volume) of the things we threw away went to the landfill or were recycled. They were printed on greenbar and hung weekly on the board in the office. The recycling bins for cans were the extra large barrels with the hook and bar on them to be auto-loaded in the truck. After removing both ends of the can and stomping it flat, you could fit about 700 pounds of steel in the barrel. One week the recycling percentage dropped dramatically. The reason, they explained to us, was that someone had put an aerosol can in with the metal recyclables, and it made the whole load useless when they processed it. It's a great example of the stupidity of the few making everyone else's efforts useless when it comes to recycling.
True, but it'll take longer to get cold, meaning increased refrigeration costs, which you'll end up paying for one way or another.
...Coke and Pepsi sale drop drasticly as consumers finally see what kinds of crap they've been drinking all these years!
Ed Wedig
Graphic design services
docbrown.net
A clear plastic 'can' and that's it? We've had these for several years in the UK - it was indeed just a 'cool' market attempt. They also had small carefully-density-controlled jelly balls floating throughout the drink. Seems to have pretty much died by now.
This is my World Wide Web of Whatever
"Soft drink" -- a holdover from Prohibition times that's still used today. I've lived in the South, and I don't think I've ever heard "fountain drink" used except maybe to specifically refer to whether or not a drink comes from a can or a fountain. "Soft drink" is definitely more popular where I've lived, with "Coke" being the most often.
(However, even living in Georgia, I've never actually heard anyone call any non-cola drink a "Coke." Ever.)
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
By the way, where i live its not "coke" and not pop (doesn't matter if its sprite, dr pepper, or coca cola)
Where exactly is this? I've always wondered. You see, I've lived in Atlanta, the home of Coca-Cola, for six years, and I've never seen anyone call any non-cola beverage a Coke. I've seen Pepsi, RC, and hundreds of knock-off store brand colas called Coke, but I've never heard a Sprite, a Dr. Pepper, or anything else called a Coke.
Personally, I think the whole "everything's a Coke" bit is an urban legend.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
But I wonder how dirty they get? Plastic seems to attract dirt worse than aluminum.
Sex - Find It