Opinion: It’s a wee, thin piece of plastic, barely a centimetre long, but it’s as good as a whole new referendum to reaffirm that the Brexit spirit is alive and in grumbling good health.
While the rest of Europe has either embraced or is quietly tolerating the new European Union (EU) requirement for bottle tops to be tethered to plastic bottles, many Britons are behaving as though this was the most dastardly calumny visited upon them since the Roman invasion.
The EU now mandates all tops be tethered by a sturdy length of plastic to facilitate recycling of tops, which comprise a remarkable 15% of food-packaging waste. With minimal practice, the tops can be pulled and twisted so they sit far enough away from the bottle neck to not affect drinking or pouring. This was not envisaged as presenting a challenge to any graduate of the sippy cup.
However, to take it from the British media – and furious regular reader mailbags – these tops are an outrage and an actual public danger. Casualty statistics are not yet known, but prominent investigative journalist Isabel Oakeshott recently warned Daily Telegraph readers the jagged unscrewed tops caused “scratched skin and lacerated lips”. She urged people to research TikTok tutorials on safe drinking.
The EU has “ruined” plastic water bottles, exclaimed the Spectator. “Brexit betrayal” and “forced to obey pettifogging rules!” thundered the Daily Express. “Nanny state”, declared GB News. Comedian Nick Dixon called the lids “inhuman”, and that wasn’t supposed to be a joke.
Britain has been unable to defy this EU rule for economic reasons. Either British bottlers run two separate production lines, increasing costs, or they forgo European market share by sticking to non-tethered caps, equally fiscally ill-advised.
Considering imported EU tethered drinks as well, resistance has proved futile.
Since the rule came into force this year, the near-instant prevalence of tethered caps has further underlined Britain’s inability to achieve freedom from the EU’s authority.
Eight years on, sheer economic practicality keeps thwarting Brexit, its original dilemma still unresolved: either trade with the EU and conform to its rules or shun the union and get poorer.
A sense of proportion demanded a proper investigation of this latest Remainer menace, so the writer experimented with a variety of tethered caps to assess the risks posed. It’s true that if you don’t extend the tether, the cap’s serrated edge could give you a scrape on the hooter if you glug straight from the bottle, and you’re liable to slosh a bit of drink about the chops.
Pouring with an unextended cap is possible without spillage. However – and this shouldn’t need pointing out, but as so many people appear concerned – the proviso is that the cap must be opposite to where you’re pouring.
On the whole, though, why would you not just give it a wee tug so the cap hangs clear?
Let’s not draw close attention to the fact that if you give it an actual yank – ie, a bit more than the officially mandated EU “25 newtons” of force these tethers must be able to withstand – the tether will break.
That would be an unthinkable breach of the regulations. We wouldn’t want to encourage civil disobedience, with Nigel Farage-led hordes assembling to brazenly apply 26 newtons to their soda pop screw caps.
Still, as with any perfectly well-intentioned EU sustainability rule, there must always be a couldn’t-make-it-up squelcher. The tethers are expected to contribute an extra 50,000-200,000 tonnes of plastic worth 58-328kg of C0₂ a year to the continent.
At least they’ll have unhappy company in the form of EU-mandated paper drinking straws, which are now thought to have a greater carbon footprint than the banned plastic ones.
