653 Winger.

by

You know those plastic rings that soda comes in sometimes?  When I was a kid they started showing pictures of animals with them stuck on their necks, or arms, or whatever, to get people to stop throwing them away intact.  Now, I don’t particularly like seagulls, but I don’t want to cause one to suffer.  So, even all these years later I still cut apart every link ring I come across.  Does anyone else do that?  Has anyone else ever done that?  Was I the only person who took that whole thing to heart?  I’ve never seen anyone else do it, but there are a lot of things I’ve never actually seen that still take place.

I’m sitting here with a pair of nail clippers cutting one up because I don’t have anything else handy.  Except the pair of scissors I just noticed not in their  proper place.  Better take care of that…  Those would have been handy a minute ago.  At any rate I got it done.  I won’t have to worry about being personally responsible for the death of any otters for another day.  At least when it comes to soda rings.  Any other things I do that might result in otter fatalities I am blissfully unaware of.

45 Comments

I do that! I remember at the end of a Captain Planet episode, they showed a cartoon turtle or something, stuck in one and there was a big drive at school about it. But really the idea that after you throw stuff away, animals have the opportunity to get caught in it is about as depressing as the original message. v.v

I still do that. Sometimes I will pull the rings apart, stretching them 2x or 3x their size and impressing my 5 year old son. I’d rather return them to the bottler for reuse, but no one seems interested.

Excellent comic overall!
Well Done
Rest Well

I do that… mostly cause its fun, also because I would hate like hell if some large robot was drankin his drank then threw it (the plastic thing) away and the plastic was caught on me…but it’d have to be like tubber-wear kind of plastic…because anyone can break from those dinky little ring ones…cept animals n stuff.

I do that whenever I do buy things that have the rings on them, but now a days many companies have just started using cardboard boxes for their six packs that are easily recycled by most people in most towns.

Oh man, I do that all the time, and my family laugh at me. Good to know there’s more of us out there.

If we continue to get mocked, I say we gather a small army, stand side by side, and march over to people while connected by the necks in a large-scale rubber-six-pack thing. It’d be like how flamingo’s march- that is, UTTERLY TERRIFYING.

Are these plastic rings still in use in the US of A?? I saw a lot of US cartoons when I was a child and they frequently showed these “edutainment” stuff at the end of cartoons about walking over the street without looking or trowing away plastic trash, but this was 35 years ago! Anyway I always thought that every child would know because their parents told them NOT to do such things.

Instead of polluting the planet with plastic trash and pretend to be environment friendly by cutting these plastic rings up everyone should only buy those cans with cardboard rings which work extremly well AND decompose in the bio-waste. By the way: Cans were banned in Germany in 2000 and we use recyleable glass bottles. That is prehaps the best solution.

I’m on vacation in Germany right now, and I have to say the stupid bottle tax you guys have is SOO annoying, no bottle is ever the price you see on the shelf, you have to walk a tonne of bottles around town to sell them at ‘participating stores’ and there is smashed bottles everywhere.

I never bother actually pulling the soda up out of the ring and instead I just pull it sideways until the plastic stretches and snaps, so I don’t have to worry about it. Only had to do it maybe 5 times in my entire life though, I usually just get cans or 2 liters.

Yep, if a soda ring passes through my hands, it gets thoroughly cut up. I don’t drink soda, though, so it only happens if I’m visiting somebody who’s at the end of their soda ring.

I do that/ Those sad commercials have been burned into my mind.
There are some companies that have “perforated” rings so you can just tear them apart.. sometimes they work.. But usually only for the first ring… the others still need to be cut. It would be a cool idea otherwise.

I started cutting the rings after that episode of the Simpsons with Little Lisa’s Slurry when Mr. Burns used those things as a giant net. I am also a little O.C.D. about it especially if it isn’t the six ring arrangement but the plastic rings that have extra slits in the middle, I basically end up cutting them into plastic confetti.

I get my milk in plastic bottles with caps that are held on my plastic rings, and I take the rings off and cut them when I recycle the bottles. I’m strong enough to just break them, but then I cut my fingers, so now I just use scissors.

I do that as well, just rip the rings apart. also on this comic, did Ed but the ds in his pocket before tossing the huge bean bag? cuz thats what it looked like in panel 4

nope it’s in his mouth actually.. which I’m not sure is good for a game system but is an effective route to take in the situation..

Yeah, I cut them up anytime I see them so that it’s usually all in one piece, but any hole is open and you’d have to be an epileptic animal having a seizure to get caught in them. At least most cities are now saying put them in with your recyclables so that they don’t end up going to landfills. Although, about the only time I see them nowadays is on the multipacks of the 16.9 oz. and 20 oz. bottles of soda or tea and those half-cans of soda.

Is Jessica using a bean bag chair as a weapon? That’s not very effective.

Nope, I totally do that and I will do it with nail clippers if I have too.. I’ve been doing it since I was like really young… anything that had potential to wrap up an animal was cut to pieces by me before it was thrown in the trash.. I’d feel really bad if I was the cause of some animal being all wrapped up side note though otter are my favorite animal :D

As for the comic, this scene reminds me of me and my siblings…, except we were fully dressed when we decided to fight over a game system..

I don’t do that really. My local recycling service does plastic, so I just toss it in my recycling. But I usually get the cardboard boxes or big bottles.

I’m pretty sure they are only dangerous as litter. If you tie your trash bags closed like you’re supposed to, the chance of the rings harming an animal is no greater than anything else you throw away. I mean, we throw away a lot of stuff that animals could just as easily choke to death on, cut themselves with, etc.

Yeah, I really don’t worry about it, but then I always put mine in a proper trash receptacle instead of casually chucking it into the nearest stream.

I used to cut up the plastic rings before throwing them away. But lately when I buy a 32-pack of sodas, they haven’t been including new rings to hold the cans together. I’ve been re-using the last set of rings I have, to remake them into 8-packs as I transport them into my fridge.

I always cut up the rings, and fuss at people who don’t. I would recycle them too, but my house is way out in the sticks where we’re lucky to get trash pickup, let alone recyclables. Which is one of the biggest problems with rural towns, in my opinion, and not enough people who actually care about these things to change it.

I definately cut my soday rings. I even recall having to do it with nail clippers myself once…

Did you know that some sodas come with perforated soda rings, so you can just tear them apart? Much easier than finding scissors.

I do that, and I’ve cut those things up for decades. Pocket-knives are great for that. You’re doing the right thing. If nothing else, you’re racking up bunches of good Karma.

I actually refrain from buying anything in a six pack, so don’t actually have worry about cutting up the plastic ringlets. Buying in 12 or 24 pack means I have twice as much recycling though, The cans and the cardboard containers. But I guess that shows how deeply scarring those messages were on me as a child as I still to this day avoid them at all costs.

Yep, I cut those suckers all up too. I keep a sharp knife around for tasks such as that. And of course, the whole time I’m carving them up, my wife is staring at me and shaking her head. Scissors? Come on, I LIKE knives, and swords!

I would… but I never get 6 packs of anything… I used to get like… six packs of plastic bottles sometimes… but I’d break the loops when I actually took off the soda.

She-who-got-away and I used to play wishbone with those plastic ring things. It can hurt like buggery sometimes, but is fun.

Wow… so many people cut the rings, and nobody admits to just ripping them with bare hands? I noticed the one person who ripped them using the can, but that doesn’t work so well when it’s reduced environmental impact bottles (aka minimal thickness plastic). That said, like many others here, I don’t tend to get my drinks in that kind of packaging.

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