it's a secret mom's campaign to stop drinking out of the bottle....

If you can't outright solve a problem you shouldn't try to improve the situation >:(

How is this improving the situation. Do people only throw away the caps? I think this is just some stupid law so that they can say they tried. I still think soda cans are just a better solution and make it mandatory that companies recycle their own waste.
- I still think soda cans are just a better solution
  
  That actually sounds like a good idea to me, or you could make them similar in design to those water-bottles that have the cap meant to stay with the bottle, shown in:
  
  this image (branding removed)
  
  Whereas the existing design is similar to the old pull tabs that were on cans which caused ecological damage when people discarded them on the ground.
  
  I wish they'd instead go after the big companies doing the majority of the damage, but I suppose this's where the cards lay. (For now)
- The parks in my area have far more bottle caps on the ground than bottles
- Do people only throw away the caps?
  
  Well yes, many throw caps and bottle separately and the people that throw their trash anywhere will certainly not care about the caps.
  
  make it mandatory that companies recycle their own waste.
  
  Lol.
  
  In what country is it mandatory for companies to recycle soda cans ?
- unfortunately yes, i've seen lots of just caps thrown around as litter
- Or just introduce the Pfand system Europe wide
- Soda cans have lots of plastic in them.

If you cannot stop the bleeding, reduce it until you can

There's a reason the saying goes "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle"

Reducing comes first, then reuse what you can, and recycle what you can't.
- Refuse > Reduce > Reuse > Repurpose > Recycle
  
  5 Rs rule

There is a patch of garbage on the pacific the size of a small continent but its still legal to sell single use plastic containers.

How many years do these people think we have?

Yes, but now the soda bottles in that patch will have their caps attached. So that's sort of, well, I suppose ... you may have a point.

More seriously I'm fully convinced that this cap attachment nonsense is purely to save coca cola et. al. further costs in recycling bottles. Like it's still a small step forward, but it wouldn't happen if corpos weren't saving a dime.
Not long. That's why we recycle. Part of that is these stupid hinges.

I don't like them, but we need them.
- Plastic recycling is a scam mate. Most of the plastic things you throw out are gonna get burned or end up somewhere for ever.
  
  They even made the little symbols look like a recycling sign, so you can feel good about yourself at the store.
  
  Dont believe me?

Another symbolic act so that they can pretend they did something for the environment and don't have to actually tackle the major problems which could cut into profits of big companies.

Also anyone got fucked over by the bottle cap spinning in the way of the pour spilling drink all over the table?

Yeah like the paper straws through a plastic lid. The part that gets chewed and wet with digestive enzymes is some limp paper yet the simple lid can be as plastic as they want.
- paper lollypop sticks but the whole lollypop is wrapped in a fuck ton of plastic
This right here..

And actually, it wouldn't surprise me if the extra spillage caused by this change (for me it's the new attached caps on tetra packs, like on plant milk) is by design, just another way to get us to buy more product more often because 20% of it now ends up on the counter..
- At this point you are just incompetent at pouring in a drink
  
  It's a very easy change to make, yes the impact is small but why not take the easy stuff first? It's not like the EU isn't doing hard stuff as well (right to repair laws or gdpr anyone?)
I don’t even understand what the theory is. Plastic is plastic. What does it matter if it’s attached to the bottle?
I literally made a video for my friends of that

sorry if it's a google photo link
You have to twist It so It stays in place

This explains a lot.

It's also annoying because my recycling bin for plastics wants the bottle but for some reason not the caps. They are to go in rhe general waste

This is because bottle caps are ordinarily too small to be useful recyclable material, as when separated they are hard to get together in enough quantity.

While attached to the bottle, they should be viable recyclables.
- Someone should tell my council.
  
  My pure guess with no evidence was perhaps they were made of a different plastic

that explains why those all suddenly become attached

I mean that's less stupid than "Paper Straws"

they are not paper?
- Some of them are for sure.
Pasta straws for the win. They are much better than paper straws in that they're still biodegradable and they don't go limp after a few sips. Have been wondering if they pose a risk to people suffering from gluten allergies/intollerances.

Oh, that's why every beverage now has these shitty caps. Worth it if it helps fight pollution tho

well, it is just annoying

I'm still flabbergasted that neither France, ~~the Netherlands~~, Switzerland, Austria nor Poland have Pfand (aka a money back deposit thing) for plastic bottles. It's such an integrated part of my life, that I wonder why other countries haven't adopted it.

Netherland got them now on:

Beer (crates)

Big plastic bottles (±1,5L)

Small plastic bottles

Aluminium Soda Cans (Newest one)

It's called 'statiegeld' here and we got them as long as I can remember. It's is just recently it also covers the small plastic bottles and soda cans.
Yeah I live in US and there are people around here going around picking out of people's trash for cans and plastic bottles probably to get the few cents that they're worth.

If you pull hard enough the cap comes off just like before. Very effective legislation and use of resources.

Thank you for doing your part in understanding why this exists and then doing the exact opposite.
- Who tf is throwing the cap away, but keeps the bottle?
Scissors also work as well if you're really hellbent on separating them. And if the EU decides to ban Scissors you can use a Knife or glass.

Am I the only one who loves the new cap design?

Yes youre literally the only one
It's fucking annoying and it's completely backwards. The cap is constantly in the way when I try to pour the contents into a glass, so shit spills everywhere. I just snip the plastic umbilical cord with some scissors or rip the cap off.

Another nonsensical bill. Add it to the pile.
- If you can't handle a slightly different lid design, you're going to hate it when you have to actually make lifestyle changes for us to not all die.

Ah so that’s why all caps suddenly suck :/. stubbornly pulls cap off of the bottle

My girlfriend can't screw them back on properly so right now she only uses each drinks bottle once

I hate the things so much because they hurt to use, can't really be used one-handed and also make it difficult to drink from the bottle because of the weird angles they implicate.

So I've been cutting the caps off and cutting the little limbs off and making what was previously one piece of plastic into three, which I obviously also hate doing.

In the past I would always screw the lid back on before binning it, either to trap the air out or for the sake of completeness, so in my particular case this policy is very much the worst of all worlds, I hope the data shows that I'm an edge case though if they're passing it into law.

my biggest pain in 2023...

Every cap should just be like those water bottle caps that pop up and down, and then use less plastic by making them unremovable.

Making them unremovable would use more plastic. A lot of people reuse those sports cap bottles.

Wouldn't that prevent people from refilling the bottles?

No. It just prevents the lid to get "lost".
- I think it's about more than that. Where I love, the caps and bottles are made out of different plastics. Most recycling stations here only accept plastic bottles without their caps, because the caps cannot be recycled. Forcing the caps to be part of the bottle essentially forces it to be of the same plastic. Or that's how I understand it at least, so the entirety of the bottle can be recycled, and so the unrecyclable caps don't end up everywhere creating microplastics as they slowly break down.
Yes. And it's also a hinderance when you want to pour it into a glass.