4 ms·
Need to ask not just which is better, but which is better for who? With glass, producing new bottles for each delivery would be super expensive, so it is in th
by DougBTX 8y ago
Need to ask not just which is better, but which is better for who?
With glass, producing new bottles for each delivery would be super expensive, so it is in their interest to bear the cost of collecting the bottles for reuse and recycling.
With plastic, producing new containers is super cheap, so it is fine to continuously produce new ones, but the waste is still produced, so the customers and their local government must bear the cost of waste disposal or recycling instead.
Essentially, moving from glass to plastic is good for the producers, as they no-longer need to care how much it costs to recycle, since they don't do it any more. But the overall cost to society might be higher, depending exactly on what the recycling costs are.
- tallanvor 8y agoOne problem is that we don't know the full cost, including the environmental impact, of each option. Glass can be cleaned and reused, but it's heavier, so transporting it both ways results in increased emissions. They could also choose to use reusable plastic containers (soda companies did this in Norway up until around 5-6 years ago), but collecting the used containers takes up much more space if they can't be compacted, which I think some grocery stores do now. There's quite a bit of energy that goes into washing containers as well. Supposedly sometimes more than what is required to manufacture new ones. I'm not sure we as society are really able to quantify the environmental costs of each just yet.
- detaro 8y agoWe could at least get somewhat reasonable estimates I think, there should be enough countries with bottle-collecting schemes to get useful data about actual effort involved.
- WalterBright 8y agoThey can move to tin cans like soda cans, which have remarkably little metal in them. No need to wash them, just throw them in the hopper with the rest of the ore.