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Design Problem: Creating Tethered Bottle Caps That People Don't Hate

As the tethered-cap law comes into effect, backlash ensues

By Rain Noe - July 9

in Packaging

This month a new law went into effect in the EU, requiring that all plastic bottles (up to 3 liters) incorporate tethered cap designs. The initiative is meant 1) to reduce litter (plastic bottle caps are reportedly the most-littered object on EU beaches), and to ensure that caps are recycled along with bottles.

Although the law has only just gone into effect, it was announced five years ago, and manufacturers have started rolling out their tethered cap designs over the past year.

Unsurprisingly, a subset of people hate them. Some users complain that the caps prevent you from effectively drinking out of the bottle, as you can see in this image:

Others tear the caps off and create a mess:

Design problem, or user behavior problem? I'd say the former. At least one packaging company, Switzerland's Corvaglia, has come up with an intelligent design. In the image below, it's the design on the right:

As you can see, the cap and hinge is designed to "park" the cap against the shoulder of the bottle, keeping it out of the way. However, I imagine people will need to see a "Did you know?!?" TikTok video to figure out how the design works.

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Jason Scala

18 hours ago

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Let's go the other way and make the caps as difficult to use as possible. Help cut down on plastic bottle use.

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- Stan Spangenberg
  
  Jason Scala
  
  2 hours ago
  
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  If you can't beat them, join them ;-)
  
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Stevie VanBronkhorst

14 hours ago

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maybe more people will switch to aluminum!

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