Hacker News Reader

Comment by ja2ke | Hacker News Reader

The very machine you mention can be found... In the past! Soft drinks, like milk and juice bottles, used to be reused and refilled. I guess it was cheaper to fire all deliverymen and not run refilling machines when bottles could be made out of thin, throwaway plastic instead.

Most soft drink bottles still say "non-refillable" on them, even though no refilling services exist, even if you wanted to.

View on HN

I was actually thinking of a machine where you insert your bottle and a screen lowers. It then does a quick scan to confirm it is a bottle of the correct dimensions and weight. It lowers a rod into the bottle and steam-sterilises it. It bakes the outside of the bottle so the bottle reaches >100 degrees for several seconds.

It then chills the bottle. It could do this by pumping refrigerated water into the bottle and then extracting it again.

Finally, it rolls a label onto the outside of the bottle and fills it with a refreshing beverage. Optionally, it could then seal the bottle.

This machine is then installed like a vending machine, but with far greater capacity (it could mix drinks with filtered water on site) and lower cost.

Oh, you're talking about the future! That's far more awesome.

You could just return an empty bottle every time you buy a new one (or pay a deposit if you don't have one). Oh wait, that already exists (doesn't sound as cool, though).

That requires the infrastructure, storage and carbon to transport the bottles somewhere else to be refilled. In the end you still end up storing filled bottles on site.

Glass Coke bottles are still sold in South America (in my country Uruguay for instance).

Even more, most people agree that it is "tastier" (just because it keeps cold better I suspect, and I hope it's not because something from the plastic container seeps into it!)

No, it's tastier in third world countries because they use real sugar instead of HFCS: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/11/magazine/11fob-consumed-t....

Not just in developing nations...you can get glass bottles of Coke in the US made with real sugar as well.

... but most commonly they are imported from Mexico.

Refillable bottles (plastic or glass) are widely used in Chile. I'm quite surprised to see that the concept doesn't seem to exist in the US.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com