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> There was no permanent waste in that process that he can recall. Except for the energy wasted to manufacture the glass bottle, clean it, transport it back t

> There was no permanent waste in that process that he can recall. Except for the energy wasted to manufacture the glass bottle, clean it, transport it back to be cleaned, and the increased weight/fragility over a similar plastic container. For example, the reusable canvas shopping bag must be reused 170+ times to actually break even with the environmental impact of choosing it over plastic bags. By the way, that's without washing it.

legulere 8y ago
Reusable glass bottles still fare better ecologically, if they are filled close by, which goes against the centralisation driven by our economy.
- JoeAltmaier 8y ago
  I'm not sure its an unalloyed gain. It takes considerable energy to sanitize food-grade bottles for re-use. That's not free to the environment.
  - Avamander 8y ago
    Could be done with water and renewable energy. Recycling water is way easier than plastics.
    - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
      The magic wand 'renewable energy' doesn't make every energy-intensive task green. Going back to sanitizing every container used in a country is a huge energy sink - probably larger than all green energy there is.
      - Avamander 8y ago
        And going back and recycling every piece of plastic bottle isn't a huge energy sink taking more than all the green energy there is, isn't going to produce more waste and require new raw materials?
        JoeAltmaier 8y ago
        Nope. Because vendors switched to plastic, because it costs less (in energy etc)
        Avamander 8y ago
        Less to produce or less to recycle? :)
  - Spooky23 8y ago
    It's not the big of a deal. The farm I get my milk from has a machine like this: http://www.aquatech-bm.com/bottle-washer-bottle-cleaner/ http://www.aquatech-bm.com/bottle-washer-bottle-cleaner/ It's little different than a heavy duty dishwasher that you find at a restaurant. They get much more efficient as you scale up -- when a large brewery washes beer bottles the costs are negligible. The inefficiency introduced are externalized costs that get accounted for. Instead of paying a bulk hauler or the city to haul, acquire landfill, etc, you end up with a closed loop. The same thing with other packaging. Plastic clamshell packaging reduces shrink for the retailer (thus providing ROI), but the inconvenience of cutting it open and cost of dealing with disposition of the waste is a consumer/local government problem.
Spooky23 8y ago
How do you capture the cost of the plastic litter? IMO these arguments are usually questionable and are based on figures from people with a bias. The department of public works guy who picks up the discarded bags at the roadside or in bushes costs the taxpayer $30-50/hr. What’s the cost of the cubic yard of the earth lost for hundreds of years? When my county was voting to ban on styrofoam, Walmart and Sam’s club put up posters about how the weight of styrofoam was saving gas vs paper cups. Supposedly a hypothetical tractor trailer loaded with a full load of styrofoam would save some quantity of carbon and diesel. End of the day, waste is waste and it is difficult to account for the cost of discarded materials in a meaningful way.
- striking 8y ago
  >How do you capture the cost of the plastic litter? WRT the parent comment, glass bottles can too be litter. I don't think they're relevant here.
  - Spooky23 8y ago
    Reusable glass bottles by their nature have a lower litter rate because there is a deposit associated with them. Even the modest $0.05 deposit in many states results in 80% recycling rate for soft drink containers, versus about 35-40% for other plastic containers. At the co-op that I used to work at, reusable glass milk bottles had a $1 deposit and 95% return rate. When I volunteered on an "adopt a highway" program through an employer when I was in college, we'd clean up a couple of thousand yards of urban highway shoulder and collect around a thousand gallons of trash. Plastic bags, plastic bottles and coffee cups were about half of the objects picked up. The rest ranged from the gross to the unusual (an iron bath tub).
    - striking 8y ago
      In some states, many plastic bottles also have a deposit. I have never heard of a $1 deposit, but I assume it's very effective with certain audiences.
      - 8y ago
wccrawford 8y ago
And heaven forbid you break it.
jogjayr 8y ago
I suspect that as solar and wind go more mainstream, driving power prices negative, we'll need to do something with all that excess energy. Grid-scale battery storage is one option but another might be to do things that would be otherwise uneconomical. As far as the canvas bag's footprint, 170+ times is like 3 years of shopping (assuming 1 trip/week) - which doesn't seem unreasonable at all. Do heavy canvas bags really last less than 3 years? And how much is washing maybe once a month going to add to that? You're not running the whole machine just for one bag right? You don't even have to toss it in the dryer after because lint isn't an issue - air-drying is fine. And drying is where most of the laundry electricity is used.
pastage 8y ago
I go shopping 2-4 times a week, and my cotton shopping bag has been in use 10 years. That's a good marginal.

legulere 8y ago

Reusable glass bottles still fare better ecologically, if they are filled close by, which goes against the centralisation driven by our economy.

JoeAltmaier 8y ago
I'm not sure its an unalloyed gain. It takes considerable energy to sanitize food-grade bottles for re-use. That's not free to the environment.
- Avamander 8y ago
  Could be done with water and renewable energy. Recycling water is way easier than plastics.
  - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
    The magic wand 'renewable energy' doesn't make every energy-intensive task green. Going back to sanitizing every container used in a country is a huge energy sink - probably larger than all green energy there is.
    - Avamander 8y ago
      And going back and recycling every piece of plastic bottle isn't a huge energy sink taking more than all the green energy there is, isn't going to produce more waste and require new raw materials?
      - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
        Nope. Because vendors switched to plastic, because it costs less (in energy etc)
        Avamander 8y ago
        Less to produce or less to recycle? :)
- Spooky23 8y ago
  It's not the big of a deal. The farm I get my milk from has a machine like this: http://www.aquatech-bm.com/bottle-washer-bottle-cleaner/ http://www.aquatech-bm.com/bottle-washer-bottle-cleaner/ It's little different than a heavy duty dishwasher that you find at a restaurant. They get much more efficient as you scale up -- when a large brewery washes beer bottles the costs are negligible. The inefficiency introduced are externalized costs that get accounted for. Instead of paying a bulk hauler or the city to haul, acquire landfill, etc, you end up with a closed loop. The same thing with other packaging. Plastic clamshell packaging reduces shrink for the retailer (thus providing ROI), but the inconvenience of cutting it open and cost of dealing with disposition of the waste is a consumer/local government problem.

Spooky23 8y ago

How do you capture the cost of the plastic litter? IMO these arguments are usually questionable and are based on figures from people with a bias. The department of public works guy who picks up the discarded bags at the roadside or in bushes costs the taxpayer $30-50/hr. What’s the cost of the cubic yard of the earth lost for hundreds of years? When my county was voting to ban on styrofoam, Walmart and Sam’s club put up posters about how the weight of styrofoam was saving gas vs paper cups. Supposedly a hypothetical tractor trailer loaded with a full load of styrofoam would save some quantity of carbon and diesel. End of the day, waste is waste and it is difficult to account for the cost of discarded materials in a meaningful way.

striking 8y ago
>How do you capture the cost of the plastic litter? WRT the parent comment, glass bottles can too be litter. I don't think they're relevant here.
- Spooky23 8y ago
  Reusable glass bottles by their nature have a lower litter rate because there is a deposit associated with them. Even the modest $0.05 deposit in many states results in 80% recycling rate for soft drink containers, versus about 35-40% for other plastic containers. At the co-op that I used to work at, reusable glass milk bottles had a $1 deposit and 95% return rate. When I volunteered on an "adopt a highway" program through an employer when I was in college, we'd clean up a couple of thousand yards of urban highway shoulder and collect around a thousand gallons of trash. Plastic bags, plastic bottles and coffee cups were about half of the objects picked up. The rest ranged from the gross to the unusual (an iron bath tub).
  - striking 8y ago
    In some states, many plastic bottles also have a deposit. I have never heard of a $1 deposit, but I assume it's very effective with certain audiences.
    - 8y ago

wccrawford 8y ago

And heaven forbid you break it.

jogjayr 8y ago

I suspect that as solar and wind go more mainstream, driving power prices negative, we'll need to do something with all that excess energy. Grid-scale battery storage is one option but another might be to do things that would be otherwise uneconomical. As far as the canvas bag's footprint, 170+ times is like 3 years of shopping (assuming 1 trip/week) - which doesn't seem unreasonable at all. Do heavy canvas bags really last less than 3 years? And how much is washing maybe once a month going to add to that? You're not running the whole machine just for one bag right? You don't even have to toss it in the dryer after because lint isn't an issue - air-drying is fine. And drying is where most of the laundry electricity is used.

pastage 8y ago

I go shopping 2-4 times a week, and my cotton shopping bag has been in use 10 years. That's a good marginal.