Continuing the water theme, let’s talk bottles. I shudder to think how many plastic water bottles are used and thrown away on the island every day. I know in our household we get through about three a day between us, at least, so I hate to think what the bars and tavernas are using. Good for the suppliers, but as these things are not recycled and end up in the landfill tip… But what happens to the bottles is not today’s topic.
Opening the darn things is. Over the last couple of months, there’s been a takeover by bottles with a new design. Someone’s come up with this great idea of designing the tops so they don’t stray from the rest of the bottle, thus, keeping them from being lost or discarded in the sea, or on land, come to that. All well and good, maybe. As is making the bottles from thinner plastic, which also seems to be happening in some cases. However, they’ve also made the things more of a challenge to open. Come to that, they’re not that easy to close either. After lunch on Monday, as we left the Trawler, I realised my backpack was wet underneath. I sniffed it to make sure it wasn’t cat pee, and couldn’t work out how it got so wet. (Had it been a cat, it would have been one with an excessive bladder.) It wasn’t until I reached the taxi rank that I remembered I had a bottle of water in there, and although I thought I’d secured the lid, they are now designed to fox even the most highly qualified physicist, and it had leaked.
You see, now, there are two dangers inherent in the seemingly innocent bottle of bottled water you can buy anywhere on the island. First, opening it. The caps are now attached to the collar by a very strong isthmus of plastic, so, once opened, they don’t drop off. This has made them (some brands at least) more difficult to open, so you have to grip more tightly, and as the bottle-body plastic is flimsier, as soon as you’ve got your cap released, you’re met with a waterspout to rival Geneva. Endless amusement when in a café and the waiter doesn’t open the things for the customer.
Then, presumably refreshed, dried off and with the flood removed from the tabletop, you come to put the lids back on. This is more of a challenge because, thanks to the new design, the top doesn’t always fit. It’s something to do with the way it joined to the bottle. You fold the lid over to find it’s slipped down the neck, so you have to wiggle-waggle it back up to get it into the right place. It’s only about two millimetres, but it’s not as easy as it sounds. There’s a ‘thing’ that keeps the top folded back, and if this slips below one of the ridges on the screw thread, you have to pull the cap out, lift it, place it back in, fold it over, and then you’re free to tighten it. Or not, because often it’s hard to see if you’ve seceded and you end up with a wet bottom. Or your backpack does.
I should draw a diagram, but I won’t, and I could advise that when you get one of these good/bad new bottles, you can always use a little force and rip the blooming top from the bottle and use it like a normal one like we used to have in the good old days of two months ago.
There, only I could fill a whole page talking about plastic bottle tops.
By the way, if you want to recycle your plastic water bottles by refilling them, thus, using fewer, there’s only one way I can think of to do it. As far as I know, there are no state or business-run ‘refuelling’ stations on the island (as there are now in some places in the world), but there is a natural one. Take a walk up to the monastery on the side of the hill overlooking the Pedi valley, known locally as ‘To Vrisis’, and you can fill your bottles from the natural spring there.
