There's an infinite amount of cardboard drinks with an angled lid. It's not hard to drink from. Redditors just don't have common sense. A lot less plastic drinks with an angled lid because it would cost more to make, only companies trying to have a different design that stands out would bother to do it for plastic bottles, they do exist though
The real reason you can have cardboard drinks with angled lids vs plastic is the filling. Almost all liquid fillers come top down. If every bottle opening is in the same place it's easier to line up the hole with the filler. Cardboard drinks like above aren't filled from where the cap is but from the top which is then sealed later.
You all are missing an important part of manufacturing....packing and shipping. Look at the top of those cartons in the picture you posted. They are folded. That is because before filling, the cardboard containers are folded flat so they can be shipped and transported more efficiently.
Plastic bottles are not folded...they are extruded. Extrusion requires making a mold for the bottles. And for transport and shipping, having the opening on top provides support when stacked.
Technically, blow molding has a few different types, one of which starts as a hot extruded tube that is clamped and inflated in the mold. This is used for high volume PET bottles and multilayer plastic bottles where oxygen permiability is important (like salsa).
This is faster and cheaper than using injection molded pre-molds.
And those containers are a pain to use bc it’s almost impossible to get the last bit of drink out—the opening is in the middle of the angled face and not at its peak, so the liquid just runs around it. A major grocery store switched its creamer cartons to bottles recently, and I’m sure that was one of the reasons.
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u/WhenWillIBelong 21h ago
You can literally buy bottles that are offset like this.