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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"!
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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...
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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!
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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.
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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
Newsflash for you, and for every other maroon who parrots the "Slashdot is selling out" / "Slashdot should charge advertising fees" lines; This is a site dedicated to news for nerds. Nerds like gadgets. They like cool toys, fast processors, high speed RAM, water cooling to make the best out of their new high speed toys, mods to make their toys look good, caffeinated products, sugary foods - how else is a news site supposed to tell people about these products without, oh, mentioning them by name? Are you going to clamour that they should charge AMD for announcing the Athlon 64 release to the market? Or they they should invoice Intel for announcing the Pentium 4 4.0GHz?
It's news. Get over it. If you don't like it, go somewhere else and be uninformed. Stick to your Celeron 400MHz and thinnet LAN and quit bitching. It's old, and nobody cares.
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Shameless plug. Like you weren't expecting it.
Yeah the technology is definately not new, this has been the standard format for tennis ball cans for well over a decade. The question is market acceptance and given the recycling concerns, I can't see that being too great.
You can already get beer in plastic bottles in the US but most people think the beer will not taste as good (for the Miller, Lite, and MGD brands that use the technology, taste isn't really a concern anyway - but somehow these consumers consider themselves beer conoisseurs if you change the bottling material). So given the limited acceptance of plastic bottles I've only seen them at sporting events where it is prefereable not to arm potentially drunken disgruntled fans with glass missiles just in case the home team loses.
Work for Change & GET PAID!
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.
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.
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").