Try to sip from your bottle and you’ll find yourself doing unfortunate facial contortions as it pokes into your nose or prods your chin. If you’re really unlucky, you’ll catch some rogue liquid in the lid, which will then inevitably catapult all down your top.

Attempt to snap the thin attachment connecting the cap to the bottle rim to avoid repeating this mess and you risk soaking yourself again, too.

The culprit, of course, is that little bit of plastic that keeps lids attached to bottles. The new design has quietly snuck onto the soft drinks aisle over the past couple of years. If you believe its detractors, this tiny but unwelcome addition to the packaging has turned a relatively straightforward process – grab bottle, remove lid, sip and enjoy – into a high-jeopardy activity.

One social media user branded this development “the worst thing to happen to humanity since the removal of the headphone jack [on smartphones]” – hyperbole, of course, but one that perhaps sums up the outsized consternation with which this change has been received in some quarters.

The correct way to describe a lid like this is “tethered”. The design can be traced back to a European Union directive that was initially proposed in 2018 then officially adopted the following year, with a deadline put in place: from 3 July 2024, the EU stated, caps on all non-returnable plastic drinks bottles with a capacity of three litres or less must stay attached after opening.

The purpose was not to collectively infuriate thirsty Europeans, but to tackle a serious problem: plastic waste.