It is well-known for plastic bottles to be a huge issue nowadays as the approximate amount of plastic bottles we use a day is higher than the Christ of Redeemer in Rio. In other words, for the past 10 years, we’ve used 4 trillion plastic bottles that could cover Manhattan.
Then, what about the bottle caps?
Bottle caps are made out of polypropylene which requires a higher temperature to melt them. So, they aren’t recyclable. Also, as one of the five deadly ocean pollutants, they’re hard to track down. Therefore, mostly end up stacked up on shores or sea creatures' bellies.
This is why capless is targeted to the general public, to help shorten the ugly journey of a plastic bottle cap. The Capless bottle is connected as one body, unable to uncap the top and bottom parts of the bottle.
The most significant trait of this bottle is that the whole bottle will be made out of the same material, which are PET or HDPE plastics, which can be recycled in re-making the same bottle or can be recycled as plastic materials for new containers, clothes, construction materials, and such.
The mechanism for this bottle is simple, it uses several levers that are attached to each section of the opening to completely open wide when the lever is pushed downwards. I’ve made some prototypes for the opening of the bottles.
The goals are simple, instead of waiting for them to be disposed or degraded underground, it is to make them both re-usable as a bottle and recyclable as plastic materials. This bottle will be price-wise accessible to the public, as to encourage the recycling of plastic bottles. After all, our ultimate goal for this business is to protect the waters.
I believe that Capless can be a spark for countering the water pollution done by water bottles and caps.
Designer: May Kim Hyunjoo