Bottle Caps Should Be ATTACHED To Reduce Plastic Pollution and Litter
Bottle Caps Are a Major Source of Plastic Pollution
Caps and lids from food and beverage containers are among the top five items found in beach and marine litter surveys – in amounts as high as 19 caps for every 100 yards of shoreline.
According to the North Sea Foundation, more than 20 million bottle caps have been collected in beach litter surveys around the world over the last three decades.
The Ocean Conservancy has found that plastic bottle caps are one of the “top five deadliest forms of marine pollution.” Sea birds, turtles, fish, and marine mammals often mistake bottle caps for food, and can be injured or killed when these caps scrape their throats or accumulate in their stomachs.
Caps are made from polyethylene or polypropylene–plastics that are hard, buoyant, and not degradable–making them an ongoing threat to marine life.
Dead albatross with a belly full of plastic trash including at least three bottle caps at Midway Atoll Refuge by Chris Jordan via U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Headquarters
One Solution: Require Connected Caps
Connected caps (also called “attached” or “tethered”) are bottle caps designed to keep the cap physically connected to the bottle after opening to prevent the caps from ending up as litter or landfill waste. Attachment mechanisms include hinges, straps, and fixed bands.
Adoption in the European Union
The European Union’s 2019 Single-Use Plastics Directive requires that by July 2024, single-use plastic products could only be sold with attached caps and lids, and big soda companies including Coke and Pepsi are complying with this directive.
Coca-Cola EU’s website states that attached caps “boost collection and recycling, and help to prevent litter,” and its UK website announced the introduction of attached caps with the slogan “Better Together.”
The manufacturer Tetra Pak calls tethered caps on multi-material drink boxes and cartons “the new normal” for the European market, but has not yet introduced this change in the U.S.
Connected Caps Will Not Happen in the U.S. Without New Laws
Unlike in the EU, the U.S. does not yet have laws requiring tethered caps. However, several U.S. states do have bills pending on this issue:
California’s SB 45 requires tethered caps by 2027 for certain bottles, and is supported by the Association of Plastic Recyclers, the Product Stewardship Institute, multiple environmental groups, and recycling companies such as Recology, Republic Services and Waste Connections. The American Beverage Association (representing soda companies) opposes the bill.
Illinois’ bill SB 0132 requires tethered caps by 2029.
Beverage companies in the United States have been slow to voluntarily transition to tethered caps, citing a “less than optimal” user experience. But some have made the change:
Crystal Geyser is the first U.S. bottled water brand to voluntarily adopt a tethered cap design for the 8-ounce bottles it manufactures in California and sells in six western states.
The U.S. supplier Aptar has designed tethered and flip-lid caps, promoting the caps as providing increased consumer convenience and better recycling rates.
The company Origin Materials has introduced an attached cap that is made of PET–the same material used for bottles “to improve recycling circularity.”
However, according to an executive in a company that makes caps, tethered caps will not become common in the U.S. until states require them: “The need for tethered closures in the US will most likely be driven by state regulation. We anticipate the states that currently regulate post-consumer resin (PCR) will be the first states to desire tethered closures.”
Unattached Bottle Caps’ Impact on Recycling
There is a great deal of consumer confusion around whether bottle caps should be left on or taken off for recycling.
Beverage companies encourage the caps to stay on the bottles when they are placed in recycling bins, but many people are not aware of this.
When caps are thrown in the recycling bin separately from the bottle, they fall through the recycling equipment because they are so small, and they end up landfilled as “residues.”
When they are put into the recycling bin still attached, they can be recycled, but the process requires a few extra steps because they are made of a different kind of plastic than the bottle is, and those two types cannot be recycled together.
In addition to requiring bottle caps to be tethered, the European directive requires that caps be made of the same type of plastic as the bottle itself; this greatly improves the recycling process and should also be required in the U.S.
