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Comment by jurgenburgen | Hacker News Reader

> In order to reduce plastic pollution, they forced manufacturers to make attached bottle caps (terrible idea)

According to research bottle caps are one of the biggest source of beach litter because they float and end up washed up. They are also exceptionally harmful to animals that confuse them for fish and end up consuming them.

I don’t think anyone who is against the bottle caps directive is serious about protecting our environment. It’s a minor change with an outsized impact.

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I am definitely not against plastic pollution, but against narrowly targeted regulation. When the regulation is very specific, the workarounds are trivial. One funny example: Lithuania banned alcohol advertisement, so the advertisers started advertising non-alcoholic beer and other drinks under the same brand names; essentially the ads stayed the same with "non-alcoholic" appended to them. It's cynical but legal.

Every airport in Europe has no water filling stations so you have to buy a plastic bottle with the stupid attached bottle cap. So green!

> has no water filling stations

Wouldn't you just fill it up from ... a tap in the washroom?

Depends on the countries water quality. Some countries don't have water good for drinking, and others have poor taste which many are put off by. That being said, many EU airports do have water refill machines. Germanys airports for example..

While I understand where you're coming from and that this thinking is probably (and somewhat understandably) why there are no water filling stations, I find this incredibly nasty. I don't want to fill my water bottle in a public restroom riddled with bacteria.

And yes, I'm fully aware that a water filling station will probably be just as nasty, but it's the thought that bugs me.

Talk about confidently incorrect. Gatwick and Heathrow have water stations all over the place and I recently saw similar in Geneva

None of those are EU

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