December 12, 2024 - The California Senate is passing a new bill that by January 1, 2027, will require plastic beverage containers up to 3 liters, to use one-piece lids.
1. Bill to be heard in 2025
Disposable plastic lids are easily separated from the bottle, reducing the likelihood of recycling and increasing the likelihood of becoming trash.
California Senator Steve Padilla drafted this bill, SB-45. The bill will be heard in the coming months of 2025.
The practice of using conjoined lids is already common in Europe, and in 2018, the European Union announced a directive to phase out separated plastic bottle caps by the summer of 2024 in an effort to reduce single-use plastics.
2, most plastic caps can not be recycled
California generates more than 14 billion plastic beverage containers and caps each year, and while 70 percent of those bottles are recycled, most of the caps are not. Data suggests that only a small portion of the 44 million pounds of plastic bottle caps generated annually are reasonably recycled.In 2023, plastic bottle caps were the third most common litter on California's beaches, triple the amount of plastic bottles in question.
In 2024 alone, surf volunteers cleaned up nearly 30,000 plastic bottle caps off the coast of the United States. Sea turtles, seabirds, whales, dolphins, seals, sea lions and other creatures mistake plastic caps for food, and these plastic products can cause terrible injuries such as internal injuries, starvation and poisoning, said Jennifer Savage, associate director of California policy for the Surfrider Foundation.
3、Commonly connected cover
The common types of lids include screw-on lids, and snap-on lids. The screw-on conjoined cap is the more dominant design introduced today, with many major packaging brands commercially adopting this design.
The Coca-Cola Company was the first to introduce this new type of cap in the European market in November 2022, with brands such as Lipton, Oyassis, and Parc following suit.
