The ingenious design of the aluminum beverage can (2015) [video]

What's not correct about it?

Litter. And pull tab litter ending up slicing peoples' feet open. And idiots opening their beveragem dropping the pull tab inside, drinking it and slicing up their throat. No, they don't go all the way down, but they'll play hell with the soft tissue in the back of your mouth.

"Nurishment" cans, often found in the foreign foods aisle, still use the old style ring pull.

I'd guess it's because they are intended to be drunk like a soda can, but packaged in a tinned-sweetcorn style can. Those cans are unpressurized, use steel, and have significantly thicker walls (= more material cost)

I do wonder why they never decided to switch over? Perhaps they consider it part of the brand? Perhaps they still run the same canning factory for decades and without expanding sales don't see a need to retool? Perhaps the 2 pence per 1.50 product are insignificant when they have quite a market niche.

I remember grownups telling me how terrible the change was, because any dust on the tab now flipped downward and fell into the can, whereas before it was pulled away.

I was never that concerned myself.

as a kid, we'd break the tab from the pull ring and then insert the fat end of the tab into the slot on the pull ring. we'd pull the ring back on the pull tab and release the ring flying. if we were really bored, we might actually go find the ring and do it again. i was surprised at how far these could fly like this.

They are susceptible primarily to corners, and after that, to edges. The sharper, the worse.

The way they are made, and the type of aluminium they are made out of, results in them failing after experiencing comparatively little strain (for being a ductile metal alloy). Because the walls are so thin, squeezing them with the grip of a hand won't cause much strain, due to the large bending radii (seen relative to the wall thickness). But if you concentrate the force around a (comparatively to your fingers) sharp corner/edge, especially if it's a corner sharp enough to hurt if you pressed on it with your hand and, say, ~5kg worth of force, you'll force it to stretch to conform to the pointy corner's shape. (Despite the factory already pushing the material close to it's limit as far as stretching-before-ripping goes. No wonder it rips, then.)

Glass has really low rates in the US, 31%. https://tablascreek.typepad.com/tablas/2022/07/why-is-glass-...

In Germany the glass recycling rate is above 80% depending on the year. However this also depends on the source of the glass. According to the German federal Environment Agency only 7% of glass built into cars was recycled, while on the other hand 84,1% of glass sourced from packaging was recycled.

link to the information from the German federal Environment Agency (in German): https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/daten/ressourcen-abfall/verwe...

But all of that plastic is incinerated and even otherwise hopefully less prone to micro plastic production, so not a real issue?

I think Iceland has a big (big for Iceland, at least) aluminium smelting industry. They don't have the ore, but plenty of cheap hydro and geothermal energy.

Aluminium melts at temperatures that, as far as ovens are concerned, can be classified as "tame". Sure, the oven needs to be built heat-resistant, but a melting point of just 660C allows things like uncooled structural steel to be used. This is so tame, that the molten salt type nuclear reactors (well, some of them) are able to serve as a heat source for such an aluminium recycling oven. 10 years ago there were coal power plants in active development that used high-pressure (around 350 atmospheres; 75% higher than what consumer-grade pressure washers tend to max out at) supercritical (700C) water to drive the first stage of their turbines, in an effort to extract more of the coal's chemical energy through exploiting a greater temperature drop. The aluminium oven does not need to handle such severe pressures, or contact with fast-flowing liquid that is as corrosive as water at those conditions (they can use a gas between the heat source and the aluminium, and fire brick style material between the aluminium and the structural walls of the molten-aluminium-bucket).

The heat is typically electric (which may or may not be CO2 intensive).

The reaction does produce CO2.

I'm not an expert, but apparently transport accounts for only 11% of carbon emissions for food [1], and I suppose it's likely similar for beer. To me this suggests factors affecting production are far more important.

[1] https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2012/09/04/how-green-is-lo...

Best option is to get a refillable growler from your local brewery. Or, get beer from the tap at your local pub.

Same here in Norway. It's rare to encounter an out of order reverse vending machine and all but the very smallest supermarkets have them and most such places are open from 07:00 to 23:00. Never encountered any kind of limit on how many and now that all the cans and bottles are crushed in the machine it's quite rare for the bin to fill up too.

The law in Michigan (and I think New York and other states are similar) is retailers must allow returns of up to 250 containers, but can choose to accept no more than that. I think the reason is to prevent people from buying uncrushed scrap cans from neighboring states without a deposit system, and returning them in a state that does have one.

The other big annoyance in Michigan is retailers only have to accept returns for the drinks they sell. So you have to keep track of what store a container came from, because if only that one store sells it, only that one store will accept its return.

A lot of times if the machine doesn't take a few of the containers, I will just give up and throw them away, because the stores don't provide recycling bins which is even more frustrating. Or, people will just leave the cans they couldn't return on top of the machines in case anyone else wants to try tracking down where they can return it.

Also, the law says any retailer must accept returns, but in reality only supermarkets with the money for the machines do. Smaller stores like gas stations generally don't.