Peeling the labels off beer cans

I guess it really seems like the Extreme Profits (for big corporate polluters) Agency more than anything these days.

 

Yeah I can't believe the epa hasn't installed air scrubbers over the boreal forests of Canada yet! What are our tax dollars even paying for?!

 

Biden is now sending people up there to help the Canucks in their efforts to extinguish those fires, so maybe they're EPA employees.

 

"The top 9 most terrifying words in the English Language are: I'm from the government, and I'm here to help."

- Ronald Reagan

P.S. Does the EPA have the 'authority' to fine the Canadians!?!

 

As someone who lives in wildfire country, I'm always grateful that there's a whole government infrastructure that mobilizes thousands of well trained firefighters and the necessary equipment when a fire flairs up in the forest.

 

And hopefully the "whole government infrastructure" is clearing out all of the dead debris prior to a fire event to mitigate things!?!

 

They have a variety of forest management programs, primarily controlled burns. Unfortunately a century of aggressive logging and aggressive fire suppression has left the forest in pretty rough shape. The US forest service has finally changed its tune though and CalFire is ahead of the curve of reintroducing a healthy approach to fire.

Unfortunately, when it comes to natural disasters sometimes all you can do is plan to respond. Our fire season is typically kicked off by dry lightning storms that drop a couple thousand lighting strikes into remote wilderness in the span of a night or two. Maybe once the EPA is done with the air filtration over northern Canada they can put up a lightning shield over Northern California.

 

Well, somebody will be the "head". Ronald Reagan for the 'win'!

Cheers!

 

My two cents- if a brewer can’t afford to use cans that don’t require plastic labels then they shouldn’t be in business. Plastic is awful for the environment and should not be a byproduct of consuming beer. It’s insulting that they would force society to bear the burden of cleaning up their mess so they can turn a quick buck.

 

Since this thread began our county has advertised to remove these plastic labels. Lucky for me the one brewery I buy most of that uses the stickers, on some beers, are quite easy to remove.

To your point @HouseofWortship to get proper cans requires huge orders of cans, and storage; and probably a long wait list. I believe this is the main reason for sticker cans.

 

Now that I've begun peeling labels off, I've discovered the wide variety of them. I've noted that the thin ones that seem designed to come off easily with minimal glue usually come from small breweries with more nature oriented labels and beer names. They're paying attention.

I've also experienced some that don't have an obvious seam and you need a knife to start ripping them. Others leave industrial-strength glue on the can, and when I haul out an armful of recycling, those cans often stay stuck to my shirt, hand, or other recycling. Most labels are somewhere in-between, sticking a lot but not leaving glue behind. None are in danger of falling off, so why the need for more/stickier glue and thicker labels than the minimum needed?

 

Why can’t paper labels be used?

I do peel the plastic off as aluminum will get recycled. I have started to toss most plastic in the trash. Even though glass does not get recycled for the most part I try to buy things in glass vs plastic.

Anyhow, why can’t paper labels be used? Is it cost? Will paper be the same issue?

Enjoy

 

Probably not resilient enough to transport, handling, elements, etc.

Add a resilient coating and you probably have something more like the plastic.

I also wonder about the adhesives used to adhere to aluminum.

 

The issue where this began is minimum orders required to get printed cans are a semi trailers worth. i.e. 244,000 if memory serves. is both cost prohibitive, and also space prohibitive.
For a good many breweries, like say, in my backyard. Hop Butcher, that have a weekly schedule to release beers with a sleeve wrap. It's more cost effective for a great many breweries and also space effective when everything is in order and all the parts are moving. What's more the turnaround time to get that semi trailer of printed cans is something like 6 months. Smaller breweries tend to work a lot faster than that kind of timeline, and also need to.

 

Is there such a thing as a small can printer that a small brewer can have next to their canning line to print on their own cans? Many small brewers managed to bring in mobile canning lines and label their own cans with paper labels. As much as I love Hop Butcher, I’d love to see them go under at this point as I view the environment as more important than the owners side business of brewing beer and making a few side bucks.

 

I don't know much about aluminum can recycling and I'm confused. I get the plastic labels and glue is a problem but printed cans with loads of color and images are fine for recycling. Does printing on aluminum make no difference?

 

Can't peel them off. The barcode is how I get my 10 cents back. Cheers.

 

I kinda agree. Hate to put more cost on the small business but this sounds like a cost of doing business. If they can't afford to use paper labels then the brewery should at least accept the returns of plastic labels and deal with them in their own. Not sure if Hop Butcher or the others offer to do this service.

I think the other issue is it hasn't been widely distributed knowledge as I had seen plastic sleeve labels for years now and only heard of the issue from this forum. Grocery stores and other can return places havent rejected plastic label returns to my knowledge.