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Jason Kottke has been travelling in Asia for the last week, and we've been following along via Flickr and his blog. All of his travel coverage is interesting, but he's doing particularly well spotting weird beverages-- including this Pepsi Coffee soda, and Fanta in a bag. The latter is particularly interesting: apparently street vendors in Bangkok pour the soda into a bag and stick in a straw-- this way they get to keep the recycling deposit. Something about this stuck in our head, and then Matt pointed out something similar in Canada: milk in a bag. Hmm! At Gothamist, two is definitely a trend, so we're going on record and predicting that by the end of 2006, all beverages in NYC will be served in plastic bags. Environmentally speaking, this is probably not a great step forward-- since plastic bags are just as terrible for the planet as plastic bottles. But maybe someone will come up with a biodegradable bag! That would be awesome, and then we could say "Hey dude, pass me that bag of Coke" and not worry about being misinterpreted.
Prediction: Beverage in a Bag in NYC by 2006
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it's not just Thailand but a lot of other Southeast Asian countries serve drinks in bags. They also serve hot beverages in those plastic bags too! Back home in Singapore I used to chug hot milky tea in that fashion, and I grew up drinking tea with a slight molten-plasticky taste to it.
mmmm, full of cancery goodness
Plastic bags are used as serving containers in pretty much every developing and third world country I've visited. Nobody wants to lose the deposit on the bottle. (I wanted a beer in a small town in Bolivia, so I had to drink it in the store because I had no bottle to give them in return.) Bags make for very cheap luggage, too. Another important use I saw was as a barf bag on buses in Ethiopia -- very bumpy rides and people without much experience riding in vehicles equals a lot of upset stomachs, and buses were always fully stocked. The most sick would usually just hang the bag loops on their ears and let it go.
The only way to drink chocolate milk in Israel is out of a bag; it even tastes better that way, kind of like how Coke tastes better in a glass bottle.
They even sell plastic containers specifically for the purpose of housing your bagged drink once it's open.
I have to say, though, that whatever Dude is drinking in the above picture looks like a Foley catheter.
Capri Sun is in a bag, no? A magic bag that stands.
When i would visit relatives in Guatemala as a kid, the big treat was getting sodas and really sugary lemonades in a bag with a straw.
By the way, in case people don't know what the previous poster was referring to, a Foley catheter is put into the bladder to drain out urine. Just so you know.
Don't we already drink wine out of a bag? Or am I the only person who enjoys "space wine" from time to time (y'know, where you take the Franzia out of the box, i.e. de-boxed wine)?
Sorry, Joclyn, but I don't care what container milk comes in. It's the milk inside that makes all the difference. As long as it's not that translucent white water they stick in supermarket dairy cases. Patrick Farms rules. As for Capri Sun, those pouches are even worse than plastic bottles. They're several different types of plastic film laminated together, including a metallized one, which means they can't be recycled and they're even more persistent in the environment. The only way to get rid of them is incineration. Landfill them and they'd probably be around until the sun goes supernova.
The best solution would be to bring your own bottle or cup and have mini soda fountains at each vendor. No waste, no new containers in the environment. But in this disposable world where nobody wants to wash dishes and containers, there's no way that idea's going to fly.
Same thing happened to us in Mexico. We were traveling in Nayarit (the state just north of Puerto Vallarta), and when we bought a Coke, they wanted to put it in a bag for us. An enterprising friend whipped out an empty plastic water bottle instead, and we poured it into there so we wouldn't have to deal with a wiggly and unwieldy plastic bag.
Hadn't seen that in a while!!! Grew up in Mexico and that was a common thing. The twist during sweltering hot summers? Vendors would keep them in the freezer and then you'd have them like popsicles (sort of).
I wanted to mention the coffee flavoured Pepsi and not the drinks in plastic bags, I hope that is OK.
I live in Switerzerland, where basically two supermarket chains supply the entire country. One of these supermarkets has just finished a two week advertising campaign for "Cappucino Pepsi" and a big sales push where you could buy six 1.5 litre bottles for the price of three. In the first week the stock didn't seem to be moving very well, and last week the mountain of bottles was relegated to the back corner of the store. I wonder if we'll ever see it again... Probably when the lime flavoured diet Coke goes out of style.
in Colombia they also have milk in a bag. I would buy a large bag of milk and drink it one sitting. My aunts used yell at me because i'd drink all the milk. psh.
i have to concur that in many other countries, the bottle deposit is a big deal. i know that some stores in colombia wouldn't even let you buy more than one Coke(in a glass bottle!) with out you bringing another glass bottle in return.
I was in Russia in August of 1991, shortly before the coup. They also served Pepsi (no coke!) in plastic bags w/straws. Odd, but man, it really DID taste better over there!
You are an excellent-sounding environmentalist, Brightliner. I thought the biggest problem with Capri Sun was that it is next to impossible to get the straw in.
Sorry, this "save the deposit" theory doesn't make sense to me. Why wouldn't the vendor just add the amount of the deposit to the current price of the drink? That would also save him the time and cost of purchasing plastic bags and transferring the drinks into them.
Because the people who buy them make 100 times less money than you do.
People who make US$3000 can curse rant and mutilate babies over a US$0.20 rise in fuel prices.
Joe, you're mistaken. The vendor does charge customer the full amount including the deposit. But dumping the drink into a bag that costs a fraction of a cent means the vendor gets the best of both worlds. He gets to charge for the bottle deposit and he gets to keep the bottle to return for the deposit. Not exactly on the up and up, but it's only a few extra cents for each customer while those same cents can pile up for a vendor in the course of a day, just like they would for those homeless people who scrounge for bottles. Only in this case the vendor doesn't have to scrounge.
we had coffee flavored pepsi here in the states already, Pepsi Kona. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepsi_Kona
what about a nalgene cantene? drinking out of one makes me think of an IV... ick but cool!
http://www.nalgene-outdoor.com/store/subcategory.asp?categorysubcategorycode=22
Putting hot beverages into a plastic bag or bottle is a terrible idea, as the plastic can leach into the drink (unseen to the eye). Not good!