Good caps. Have QR codes ruined a good cause?

For almost three years now I have been participating in the Good Caps project. Who does not know – this is a collection of plastic caps from food packaging – juices, yogurts, and the like. We unscrew these caps, wash them, pour them into a large five-liter drinking water bottle (it is better to choose brands with a wide neck, because some caps are quite wide and difficult to crawl through) and take them to collection points. The easiest way in this regard is for families with children, because such bottles are collected in almost all kindergartens and schools in Moscow.

The organizers of the project, the Volunteers to Help Orphans Charitable Foundation and the Good Caps Public Movement, send them to a plastics processing plant, which transfers money to buy funds for disabled children. Basically, these are children’s wheelchairs, they also buy walkers, ankle splints and devices with the strange name “verticalizer”. These items are expensive, to buy one, you need 6-7 “gazelles” stuffed with “good caps”, well, a family of four collects one or two five-liter jars in six months.

We sent the last batch in September (we collected it since the New Year), and the other day we decided to gut the bags, pour the “good caps” into a jar and take them to school. And then they discovered that during this time something has changed.

What has changed is that instead of a barcode printed on the side of the package, QR codes appeared on dairy products. And manufacturers began to glue these codes on the cover. And if earlier the barcode was printed on the side of the tetrapack or on the film that fits the bottle, now some manufacturers have begun to glue a piece of paper with a QR code on the plastic cap.

The innovation was introduced in December 2021, but it became a “obligation” from September 2022. It was then that “milk” with new codes appeared on store shelves. That is, in September we took clean caps to the school, and now we found papers with a code on a new batch. And we thought: what to do with them? The key question is to peel off or not?

To this question, the partner of the federal environmental and educational project “Divide and Multiply”, Replastic LLC, answered this way:

– The sticker on the lid definitely degrades the quality of the pellet and limits its applicability. But it is not necessary to separate it. We add sticker caps to our products in small quantities and so far so good. Now, if the stickers appear on all the covers, then it will be necessary to come up with something …

There are two problems here: the sticker itself – its material is different from the cover material – and glue. For example, bottles are labeled with several dots. But on the covers, the glue is on the entire surface of the sticker.

Anna Vinogradova, Vice-President of the Volunteers to Help Orphans Charitable Foundation, head of the Kind Caps project, Anna Vinogradova, said that processors allow caps with papers to be brought in, as they fall off during processing. I don’t know how this happens, because they are stuck to the conscience …

The appearance of QR codes is, in principle, a good thing: with their help, it is much easier to carry out spot checks. The movement of “milk” can be tracked at any stage from the producer to the consumer. Displays information about the brand, the presence of a certificate of veterinary control, composition, fat content, volume and expiration date. This means that there will be less counterfeit products on the market, which are manufactured in violation of GOSTs and TUs.

However, as always, any innovation – even a good one – turns into problems. At the very beginning of the work there were software failures, there were long queues. Now here is the question of recycling. It turns out that with one hand the system encourages the emergence of plastic recycling, collection and disposal plants, and with the other hand it molds paper on this plastic and degrades its quality?

So far, as the representative of the processor has already said, the number of caps with stickers is not very large. But after all, it is necessary to monitor the quality of not only “milk”! What about juices? Aren’t they counterfeit? That is, in the future (possibly) the number of caps with QR codes will only increase …

By the way, some manufacturers approach the matter responsibly. For example, there is a very good kefir on sale, in which the QR code is printed on a tetrapack – on the side and on top. And the lid is clean. Or ryazhenka, in which the QR code is printed on the bottle-fitting label. Lid is still clean.

But the yogurt manufacturer Agusha puts a QR code on all the lids. Sit them then, tear them off.

It’s good that at least the child is entertaining.

Yana MAYEVSKAYA.

Photo of the author.