Non-separating plastic bottle caps - grrrrrr!!!

I've had plenty of experience that contradicts that trenchant opinion - both in terms of goods and of services.

A good example involved Waitrose. Chicken Kebabs being sold significantly under-weight. Waitrose came back with "Our supplier has only been able to source small chickens recently". It came as quite a surprise to them when I suggested "then put more bits of chicken on the kebabs" - but that was what happened - and has continued to be the case ever since.

Mind you, I've gone off Kebabs recently !

PA

PA

Good. For me it is nothing but extra hassle.

We buy a *lot* in plastic bottles (fizzy drinks, fizzy water, milk) - enough to almost fill a 240l bin every 4 weeks. All end up in our bottle and can recycling bin, collected 4 weekly by the council or in the recycling bin at work. Having to gather them up to take with me when shopping and then feed them into a machine to receive the deposit back, just means more effort for me and more of my time wasted - for exactly the same number of bottles returned for recycling.

Or the glass bottles which have a plastic cap & pouring spout firmly embedded in the neck[1]. I would be happy to separate the glass and plastic if I could, but how can you do it without shedding blood?

Cartons of orange juice (etc) are a sort of plastisized card/paper, so the captive plastic cap on that is even more silly.

It can be done, with care, using a skewer!

nib

The idea behind the vending-machine approach to recycling is to keep environmental matters to the fore in your mind.

Many years ago someone complained that they scrupulously put brown bottles in the brown bottle bin, clear bottles in the clear bin, etc, but one day they were there when the lorry turned up to empty the bins. Yes…all the meticulously sorted bottles were dumped together on the lorry. When they complained, someone admitted that this was done to keep environmental matters at the forefront of people’s minds.

Well you just did. (Apparently both terms are acceptable.)

More likely put people off the idea entirely.

I can remember the 3d deposit scheme for bottles - in this case the bottles were washed and reused: much more "environmental" than smashing up bottles and melting them down - that heat costs a lot of CO2.

I used to buy a lot of fizzy water, pretty cheap from Lidl, but got fed up with lugging it in from the car and embarrassed by the amount of recycling it was creating. OK, better than landfill, but still...

So I stopped and didn't buy a Sodastream or similar. Now I'm thinking I might - any advice about the best type? I'm not bothered about flavours, just water. [BTW, cola drinks with Phosphoric Acid are implicated in kidney stone problems.] And can such a device be used to somehow charge SWMBO's half empty Cremant bottles to stop it going flat?

According to a radio item recently, one problem with plastic bottle deposit schemes is that the bottles themselves cost <1p to make, so it's an easy profit for organised criminals to produce bottles for junkies to recycle for a cut.

on holiday in France - 40 years ago - I remember machines at supermarkests which accepted bottles and gave out coins.

Even bank machines which take-in real coins and credit it to your account manage to get clogged-up very easily. I can imagine a machine that's supposed to take-in bottles and cans being unavailable half the bloody time ...

Yes, I used to have a SodaStream (bought with Barclays Profile Points). Quite handy (as all the water comes out of the tap). You fill up the bottles with water and chill them in the fridge. Then fizz them up and add the flavours if you want to, or just use it to fizz water.

It broke and I didn't bother to get a replacement unit (which would have been cheap as I could have used the existing plastic bottles and CO2 bottles).

In reality in Germany and France they work pretty well.

Eek! Check how to get to the nearest A & E department, before trying this at home.

Writing, I'd use the full thing (well, I just did). Speaking, it's always "Worcester Sauce".

P.S. Should it now be called "Three Counties Sauce"?

P.P.S. The wiki entry mentions: "The three English agrarian counties of Gloucestershire, Herefordshire and Worcestershire". The only times I have seen the word "agrarian" used, it has always been followed by either "revolution" or "reform".

Or you could have the American visitor pronunciation eg Wor-ces-ter, Glo-ces-ter, Chel-ten-ham, etc.

Loughborough?

Try Goodnestone in Kent. There are two of them, not that far apart. Pronounced differently.

Luger-Baruger