California pushes for caps to be tethered to plastic bottles

If you're old enough, you remember the litter-prone, pull-off metal tabs on aluminum cans. And you probably recall when they were replaced by the push-down versions that stay attached to the can.

Now, some environmental groups and legislators in California want the same thing for plastic bottles: They're pushing for a law that mandates caps be tethered or attached to bottles.

You might call it a "tether in their cap." The goals are to cut back on cap litter that becomes marine pollution and to capture the caps for recycling.

By some estimates, cap waste is prevalent. Beach cleanup surveys since 2014 from Ocean Conservancy consistently rank plastic caps the third or fourth most common piece of litter.

Of the 6.9 billion plastic bottles opened each day worldwide, fewer than 1 billion of those caps ultimately get recycled, according to a California company in the tethered- ​ closure business.

But the idea of requiring tethers faces resistance, at least as a legislative mandate. The beverage industry argues reliable technology is not available, and some plastics recyclers worry new cap designs could unintentionally harm their business.

Others in the industry dispute that and say the technology is already here.

Bottled-water maker Crystal Geyser has started using tethered caps on mass-market water bottles in the United States, and one new firm claims its cap technology is ready and is being rolled out, mostly in Asia for now.

California lawmaker Mark Stone, a member of the state Assembly and author of the legislation, points to how the aluminum can industry changed in the 1970s and 1980s with environmental benefits.

"Industry changed in a way that brought forward a product that kept that pull tab captured, that really reduced the amount of that litter going out into the environment," Stone said. "We've proven we can ban plastic bags, we've talked about microbeads, we've talked about [any] number of things.

"It's time that we worked with a process to ensure that when bottles come back to the recycler, they come back with the caps on," he said.

Stone's legislation would require that all plastic bottle caps sold in the state be tethered by 2020. It passed an Assembly committee on a 7-3 vote in early January.

But the legislation has since stalled because it was unable to advance further by a Jan. 30 deadline imposed by California's legislative rules.

Does the technology exist? The beverage industry's chief lobbying group says no, it's not well-developed yet.

Fredericka McGee, the vice president of California government affairs for the American Beverage Association, told a Jan. 8 Assembly committee hearing that the industry is "clearly not opposed to the use of a tethered cap" but did oppose Stone's legislation because it's "an unworkable mandate."

Beverage-makers agree waste is a problem but see technical hurdles, she said.

"There is some work to be done, clearly, but ... we can't solve that problem if we don't have the technology to do it," she said. "Carbonated drinks and hot-fill drinks, which is what this bill provides for, still there is no technology available right now to provide for a tethered cap."

She said the industry works on initiatives to reduce marine litter, including participating in an Ocean Conservancy effort to raise $150 million to fight plastic ocean pollution.

But McGee suggested it could take a decade to transition to tethered caps.

"Long term, even if we had a prototype for, for instance, Coca-Cola, our bigger producer, if we had a prototype that was ready to go now, to get it on the shelf in all their production streams would take eight to 10 years for them to get out there and have it on the shelf," she said.

New caps need to pass a lot of hurdles, she said.

"We don't have a prototype that has now been shown to work 100 percent of the time, is reliable, has the tamper-resistant protections that we normally need for our products, and so it's hard to say, hard core, we can do this in X years," she said.

The unknowns also prompted the Plastics Recycling Corp. of California to oppose the legislation. PRCC is an industry coalition that supports recycling by purchasing recycled PET bottles for resale.

A PRCC representative testified against the bill, and Executive Director Patty Moore later added that she is concerned tethered caps could increase yield loss in PET bales since the caps are usually polypropylene or high density polyethylene.

Recyclers want to collect the caps but also worry new designs may hurt their bottom lines, she said.

"We are in opposition because there is no known technology for tethered caps for hot-fill and carbonated beverages, thus we are concerned that new technology may not be compatible with recycling," she said. "Worst case, it is a contaminant."

She said recyclers are already dealing with tough economics.

"PET reclaimers are already under stress," she said. "Until we know what the tethered technology will bring, I am concerned this will add to their yield loss."

But others say technology for tethered caps is workable and will not contaminate recycling.

Bottled water company Crystal Geyser, for example, is already using tethered caps on some PET bottles. The CEO of Crystal Geyser's parent company, CG Roxane LLC in Calistoga, Calif., testified in January in support of Stone's bill.

Ronan Papillaud said he supported arguments in favor of tethered caps made by the environmental group Californians Against Waste. He also noted that tethered caps save CG Roxane money by reducing the weight of a bottle.

"It makes financial sense to do that because it allows you to go with a lighter PET bottle," Papillaud said. "For the producers there is also an incentive to go with a cap that stays with a bottle."

He said his company saw "absolutely no issues" with recycling. Contacted after the hearing, CG Roxane declined further comment.

The Upstream Policy Institute, an environmental group working on the issue, said CG Roxane has rolled out its tethered caps at bottling plants in Texas and California.

Miriam Gordon, San Francisco-based policy director for the institute, said the Crystal Geyser tethered cap requires a thinner neck than a traditional PET water bottle and saves 1 gram of plastic per bottle.

Gordon, who testified alongside Papillaud at the January hearing, said CG Roxane officials told her they plan to start making bottles with tethered caps at every plant in California as equipment needs replacing, which is typically every five to seven years.

Some in the recycling industry back the California legislation. CarbonLite Industries LLC in Century City, which says it's one of the largest makers of food-grade post-consumer PET resin in the world, put its name on the list of official supporters of Stone's bill.

As well, some companies say they've put a lot of work into developing tethered caps.

San Bruno, Calif.-based startup ThisCap Inc. has spent four years working on more than 50 prototypes and says it now has technology that works.

The company's equipment retrofits slitting machinery for existing bottle production lines, only changing how the safety seal is perforated to create a tether, Managing Director Michael Maguire said.

"In order to adapt our technology to any existing cap, it's as simple as changing the blade in the machine," he said. "We're taking the same cap and making a minor change in the slitting process."

That was the research challenge, he said: to make a commercially viable process that works cheaply on existing production lines. He said ThisCap's patented technology costs one-fiftieth of a cent per bottle.

It's currently being used in the market and will have a wider rollout in Asia, Africa and India by midyear, Maguire said.

On its website, ThisCap says it has a relationship with Italian packaging-machinery maker Sacmi Group. Maguire declined to give details but said "we're strongly connected to Sacmi."

"They learned about our product," he said. "They sought us out because they believe that our technology is the one true solution that could transition to market."

Maguire said his company's process works on hot-fill and carbonated products, and he took issue with the beverage industry comments that technology is not yet available.

"Everything they are saying about the technology not existing or there is no cap that can be used for carbonated and hot-fill, is completely false," Maguire said. "Because we're using your cap."

It seems California legislators, even if the bill dies this year, are not done.

Stone suggested he wanted to hear a realistic timeline for tethered caps from industry. Another member of the committee, Susan Talamantes Eggman, D-Stockton, seemed to acknowledge the political hurdles when she said it may not "get across the finish line this year," but quickly added she wanted to see "some real workable solutions for California."

Stone said he wanted to give the industry "a little bit of a nudge or a spur, get them to come up with an appropriate solution [so] we can solve a big problem for California."

"The technology really is there, or it's nascent, and it is coming and California should be on the forefront to ensure that bottle caps are attached to the bottles and we have the best possible opportunity to remove this offending plastic from our environment," he said.