Pull tab Coke in China
July 23rd, 2007
During a trip to China, I was shocked to find a Coke can with a ring pull tab (also known as a rimple). For those of you who are not familiar with the ring pull, it’s probably because they haven’t been very widely used for decades now. (They were phased out of use in the 80’s due to sharp edges and the tendency for the tabs to be casually tossed aside and become litter.)
In 1975, Dan Cudzik patented the ubiquitous “stay-tab” which offered a safer and more environmentally responsible solution which we now find on virtually every aluminum beverage can. The design is delightfully simple and keeps the tab attached to the can unless the user intentionally breaks the tab free.
So, when I found this can, I thought it was rather odd that the multi-national Coca-Cola corporation would use this arguably less responsible packaging solution in China. My guess is that this type of packaging is fractions of a cent cheaper to manufacture, providing financial savings to Coca-cola. However, given the undesirable traits of the ring pull, this would imply that the executives at Coca-cola make the conscious and deliberate decision to use an obsolete, dangerous and environmentally irresponsible packaging solution to increase profits at the expense of the public good. I find this juxtaposition of 44 year-old pull tab technology with modern boy-band, pop-icon graphics quite unfortunate.
Link to 1963 Ring-pull Patent
Link to 1975 Stay-tab Patent
Popularity: 14% [?]
July 25th, 2007 at 2:24 am
Believe it or not, I’ve seen a few of these in British take-aways lately. The strength of Sterling means lots of people are importing Coke from other countries, some of which still use ring pulls (evidently).
July 25th, 2007 at 7:16 am
Were other brands of soda using the same style can? It could be an (unfortunate) attempt at fitting into a different market used to this style of can.
Coke has used a lot of different cans over the years, for various reasons:
http://www.usasoda.com/Cokeindex.htm
July 25th, 2007 at 11:45 am
Wow! That Coke link is pretty comprehensive. I can certainly envision archaeologists some day using this site to “carbon date” garbage dumps created by us. : )
September 17th, 2007 at 1:39 pm
I’m guessing that after health and safety reasons forbid pull tabs in the States, soda companies sold off their pull tab equipment to China and other third world countries. Countries where public safety is not so much a priority and lawyers don’t sue as often.
October 2nd, 2007 at 7:24 pm
[...] pull tab coke cans! I can’t believe [...]
October 13th, 2007 at 11:24 pm
Juxtaposition? Give us a break, man! It all seems like “small beer” compared to nuclear waste; wars all over the world; abysmal human rights violations by superpowers Russia, USA, & China…global warming; population explosion, food & water shortages, etc. Hop onto a more urgent bandwagon, ma friend. Besides, Coke’s bad for you anyway. Drink spring water. They do have that on the West Coast, right? George Carlin says it better: “The planet is fine. Compared to the people, the planet is doing great. Been here four and a half billion years. Did you ever think about the arithmetic? The planet has been here four and a half billion years. We’ve been here, what, a hundred thousand? Maybe two hundred thousand?...[and] we have the CONCEIT to think that somehow we’re a threat?”
October 22nd, 2007 at 6:47 am
Hmm, just saw this post – I think this is probably to do with the fact that Coke is bottled not by the Coca Cola company, but by various regional bottling companies. This is mentioned in the Wikipedia article as well. So it’s likely that the regional bottler simply hasn’t “upgraded” to the new tab technology, either because they’re actually using 40-year-old machines, or because they’ve never seen any reason to. I used to buy Arabic-language Schweppes sodas in New Haven that had the older tab type.
December 10th, 2007 at 12:51 am
Steve Jones – I definitely agree with you. There are plenty of things endangering human existence which are way, waaaaay bigger than just one pull-tab Coca-Cola can. Spending any effort on this appears frivolous.
However, I think this product is indicative of our current situation: we’re still using 50 year old technologies where we should be expending time and creativity to break paradigms like that of drinking Coca-Cola, from a can, etc. We’re very far from where we need to be, and if we can’t even get this part right, what does this say about our hope for survival?
December 10th, 2007 at 1:07 am
Jeff, thanks for the clarification about regional bottlers.
The possibility that ~40 yr. old machines are still working is in some ways inspirational. ...can’t really think of many things in my daily life that last that long.
As for the juxtaposition, I meant to illustrate that I thought it odd to see boy-band characters on a pull-tab can where you’d expect to see an old-school “Schlitz-esque” graphic, like this: http://www.chiptin.com/schlitz/history_images/histor16.jpg
December 10th, 2007 at 1:09 am
FYI, that Schlitz graphic dates to 1963.
January 23rd, 2008 at 10:50 am
Coming from China, I was surprised to find that Americans use the tugged-in tab for soda can. It is dirty! I always washed or cleaned it with tissue before I opened it until I became as dirty as Americans and no long care.
But in China, there is much dirt in the air and if you put any cans out in the open air, it will soon be covered with a layer of yellowish dirt. I don’t think you can sell many cans of soda with the tugged-in tab.
That’s the only reason. All those 40 year machine theory is just a guess from somebody who has never travelled to a third world country.
January 28th, 2008 at 7:53 am
Hi, Mark –
Having lived in Peru for about a year, I do have some relevant background. Interestingly, there are more Coke bottle types in use there than in any other country – distinctly inefficient. I remember you’d see about a dozen different sizes and shapes on a day-to-day basis. Still, most of them are reused, not recycled, and certainly some of them are quite old. Probably not 40 years old.
However, you see lots of old machinery, presumably imported from wealthier nations, in places like Lima – the printing district there is full of old offset presses, paper slicers, etc. which are surely about 40 years old. For even more expensive equipment like bottling gear, you’d think the economic incentive is even stronger to reuse/repair old hardware. Another consideration is that the pull-tab may be slightly cheaper to produce… but it looks like it’d be the same.
I definitely hear you on the dirty tab issue… in Peru the shopkeepers would always wipe off the top for you.