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The part about plastics being useless to recycle actually makes a lot of sense, if you live in a place where trash is incinerated for electricity or heat, and y

The part about plastics being useless to recycle actually makes a lot of sense, if you live in a place where trash is incinerated for electricity or heat, and you have oil-powered electricity. Making virgin plastic from the oil you saved by burning plastic trash in its stead is better/cheaper/more energy fficient than recycling the plastic trash. Aluminium is always extremely cost-effective to recycle, because making aluminium from bauxite requires enormous amounts of electricity, but re-smelting aluminium containers is cheap. I'm surprised that glass was not cost-effective to recycle according to the article. I thought that since it's generally easy to sort and re-smelt, it's be all good. But maybe the raw materials are so cheap that it outweighs the cost of recycling?

Terribledactyl 11y ago
Traveling through Germany, any grocer I bought a glass bottle from required a deposit that was returned when the bottle was. Shipped back to original producer, then cleaned and refiled.
DougWebb 11y ago
I'm no expert, but I think glass has a lot of additives that impact its reuse. Colors for sure, but also strength, clarity, thermal conductivity, and maybe more. But for glass bottles specifically, if people got over being sensitive to the bottle color (both consumers and brand-conscious producers) it would probably be ok to lump the bottles together.
- majewsky 11y ago
  Where I live, glass is collected in three bins, labeled "white glass", "green glass", and "brown glass". The classic question is "What about blue glass?" As it turns out, all oddly-colored glass should go into the white glass bin since the recycling processes for green and brown glass are tuned for the specific dyes used.
deleted 11y ago
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delazeur 11y ago
> Making virgin plastic from the oil you saved by burning plastic trash in its stead is better/cheaper/more energy efficient than recycling the plastic trash. Do you have data on this? I didn't find any cited in the article. If it's true, I would be very interested.
sailfast 11y ago
The efficiency arguments against glass that I've seen involve the sheer weight of transport (and the gas / cost involved) from use point to plant, amount of breakage that occurs that endangers employees, and the limited cost savings of recycled glass over new glass. Forget where I read it, but apparently much of the recycled glass is ground up and used for fill because of the lack of demand for the post-recycled product.
ajross 11y ago
Yeah. The energy cost to just melt sand into glass isn't likely to be significantly different than remelting it for recycled products. And I'm willing to bet that there are plenty of natural silica sources at a higher purity than whatever you get out of the mixed glass recycling tub.
- kuschku 11y ago
  > mixed glass recycling tub. That’s why in some countries glass recycling is separated by color.
- Symbiote 11y ago
  You seem to be guessing, when you could look this up very easily. "Every metric ton (1,000 kg) of waste glass recycled into new items saves 315 kilograms (694 lb) of carbon dioxide from being released into the atmosphere during the creation of new glass." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_recycling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_recycling
  - ajross 11y ago
    How much is that as a percentage overhead, though? I'm guessing not much. It takes a lot of fuel to get something that hot. The point was why recycling glass is less economically favorable, not that the carbon advantage specifically was zero.
melling 11y ago
Who uses oil to generate electricity? https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/power-plants/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/power-plant...
pjc50 11y ago
you have oil-powered electricity There's not a lot of that about (1%): https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=427&t=3 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=427&t=3 I agree that we should rehabilitate incineration where it's more efficient than recycling and doesn't produce anything bad (dioxins were a problem at one point). It's certainly better than it ending up in the sea.

Terribledactyl 11y ago

Traveling through Germany, any grocer I bought a glass bottle from required a deposit that was returned when the bottle was. Shipped back to original producer, then cleaned and refiled.

DougWebb 11y ago

I'm no expert, but I think glass has a lot of additives that impact its reuse. Colors for sure, but also strength, clarity, thermal conductivity, and maybe more. But for glass bottles specifically, if people got over being sensitive to the bottle color (both consumers and brand-conscious producers) it would probably be ok to lump the bottles together.

majewsky 11y ago
Where I live, glass is collected in three bins, labeled "white glass", "green glass", and "brown glass". The classic question is "What about blue glass?" As it turns out, all oddly-colored glass should go into the white glass bin since the recycling processes for green and brown glass are tuned for the specific dyes used.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

delazeur 11y ago

> Making virgin plastic from the oil you saved by burning plastic trash in its stead is better/cheaper/more energy efficient than recycling the plastic trash. Do you have data on this? I didn't find any cited in the article. If it's true, I would be very interested.

sailfast 11y ago

The efficiency arguments against glass that I've seen involve the sheer weight of transport (and the gas / cost involved) from use point to plant, amount of breakage that occurs that endangers employees, and the limited cost savings of recycled glass over new glass. Forget where I read it, but apparently much of the recycled glass is ground up and used for fill because of the lack of demand for the post-recycled product.

ajross 11y ago

Yeah. The energy cost to just melt sand into glass isn't likely to be significantly different than remelting it for recycled products. And I'm willing to bet that there are plenty of natural silica sources at a higher purity than whatever you get out of the mixed glass recycling tub.

kuschku 11y ago
> mixed glass recycling tub. That’s why in some countries glass recycling is separated by color.
Symbiote 11y ago
You seem to be guessing, when you could look this up very easily. "Every metric ton (1,000 kg) of waste glass recycled into new items saves 315 kilograms (694 lb) of carbon dioxide from being released into the atmosphere during the creation of new glass." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_recycling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_recycling
- ajross 11y ago
  How much is that as a percentage overhead, though? I'm guessing not much. It takes a lot of fuel to get something that hot. The point was why recycling glass is less economically favorable, not that the carbon advantage specifically was zero.

melling 11y ago

Who uses oil to generate electricity? https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/power-plants/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/power-plant...

pjc50 11y ago

you have oil-powered electricity There's not a lot of that about (1%): https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=427&t=3 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=427&t=3 I agree that we should rehabilitate incineration where it's more efficient than recycling and doesn't produce anything bad (dioxins were a problem at one point). It's certainly better than it ending up in the sea.