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> There is an energy saving component to recycling. Aluminum for example takes a tremendous amount of power to produce and recycling reduces that. Yes, that’s

> There is an energy saving component to recycling. Aluminum for example takes a tremendous amount of power to produce and recycling reduces that. Yes, that’s why aluminium is recycled everywhere. Glass, on the other hand, is more of a “What the hell do we do with this?” situation because making glass from sand is cheap and doesn’t have the quality control issues of making it from old glass. That’s why recycled glass goes to making gravel, decorative or not, mostly. Transport is cheap and most recycling makes no economic sense and wouldn’t even with a carbon tax. Chemical feedstock is cheap, wood is cheap, metals are cheap. That covers plastics, paper and manufactured goods. Recycling is a religious impulse, not an economic one.

kwhitefoot 8y ago
> Transport is cheap only because heavy goods vehicles do not pay for the damage that they do to the roads and the environment and because the oil industry is effectively subsidised.
tzs 8y ago
> Glass, on the other hand, is more of a “What the hell do we do with this?” situation because making glass from sand is cheap [...] What about the sand shortage? [1] [2] [3] [1] https://www.npr.org/2017/07/21/538472671/world-faces-global-sand-shortage https://www.npr.org/2017/07/21/538472671/world-faces-global-... [2] https://www.businessinsider.com/global-sand-shortage-could-cause-damaging-effects-2018-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/global-sand-shortage-could-c... [3] https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2017/04/24/why-there-is-a-shortage-of-sand https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2017/04/24/...
- YokoZar 8y ago
  The shortage is for beach sand. I believe glass is made from different sort of sand.
donw 8y ago
I like the German solution for dealing with glass bottles: rather than recycling, they are made to be washed and reused. You pay a deposit when you buy a bottle of tasty beverage, and some time later, can take those bottles back to the grocery store. There, you put your used bottles into a machine which scans each bottle, and gives you an aggregate receipt for all of the bottles you returned, which you can then use to buy goods at that store. It's a great system for encouraging reuse, and we should be doing this in the US.
- YokoZar 8y ago
  Most states already have a refundable deposit on recyclable containers. In practice, it functions as a tax on recyclable containers: most individuals don't reclaim the deposit unless they're harvesting cans in bulk.
  - ohyeshedid 8y ago
    "Most states already have a refundable deposit on recyclable containers." That's kind of a nebulous statement, but within the OP's context; there's only 10 states that have bottle deposits. I've never personally seen a can deposit; usually the money made from collecting cans is from their scrap weight value, not any kind of deposit. Are there other container deposits I'm unaware of in the states?
    - sokoloff 8y ago
      Most (all?) states with bottle deposits also charge that on cans of soda/beer as well.
      - ohyeshedid 8y ago
        You are absolutely correct; there are can deposits in those same ten states. Thank you for pointing that out.
- detaro 8y ago
  While I like it too, it has some issues in practice, the biggest being that it works best with standardization: E.g. there's a few common types of beer bottle, and the idea is that you can ship bottles to whatever is the closest brewery that needs bottles and they can use them. That of course breaks down if breweries do their own, custom bottles, because now you have to filter those out and ship them to their specific brewery, which a) increases processing effort and b) means shipping empty bottles over longer distances (and in the US, the distances would potentially be way larger than in Germany).
merb 8y ago
Glass depends on the Country, Germany is small and we do not have Tons of quartz sand available
- barry-cotter 8y ago
  The whole point of the EU is not to depend on the country. The EU is most of a continent, I’m sure it has ample sand and sandstone for making glass. German manufacture of cement isn’t much different from elsewhere, why would manufacture of glass be absent taxes and regulation?
  - merb 8y ago
    well the altest reportage i've seen highlighted that germany recycles up to 50% of glas for newly made bottles. (glass bottles already get reused a lot anyway) quartz sand is available of course and we also import it, but it's actually not that cheap. in germany we have glas containers for old glas which a lot of people use, the reclycing facility only needs to filter out trash (which most often consists of metals) which is dirty simple. also it's cheaper to recycle glass. you still need high temperatures but since the glass tainted it will take way less heat (probably doesn't make that much of big difference, still above 2000 degree celsius, i think it's like 3% energy saving, but couldn't find too much articles that weren't behind closed doors). the glass still need to have a containment of a simple percentage, else it needs to be redone, but most of the time this is reached and the glass is still dirt cheap - the trash. btw. recycling of glass isn't just done by germany. the whole eu recycles glass, with a rate of 74% (2013 data: https://feve.org/glass-recycling-hits-73-eu/ https://feve.org/glass-recycling-hits-73-eu/, https://feve.org/recyclingstatistics2016/ https://feve.org/recyclingstatistics2016/) (which is a lot, but not enough for some people) and as said it's mostly bottles: "An estimated 90% of what is collected goes into creating new bottles from old ones"
dao- 8y ago
Making glass from glass isn't expensive either, kind of similar to how you'd make glass from sand: you melt it. The government needs to set the right incentives, though. Recycling of one-time use glass works quite well in Germany.
- barry-cotter 8y ago
  If you use industrial feedstock of known characteristics quality control is much easier than if you use glass that might include window glass, coloured glass of a colour you don’t want, random chips of ceramic, etc. Recycling of one time glass doesn’t work that well in Germany, look at wine bottles. What works well is reuse of bottles, both glass and plastic, and having big deposits on bottles, big enough that people are motivated to bring them back to the store to redeem the deposit.

kwhitefoot 8y ago

> Transport is cheap only because heavy goods vehicles do not pay for the damage that they do to the roads and the environment and because the oil industry is effectively subsidised.

tzs 8y ago

> Glass, on the other hand, is more of a “What the hell do we do with this?” situation because making glass from sand is cheap [...] What about the sand shortage? [1] [2] [3] [1] https://www.npr.org/2017/07/21/538472671/world-faces-global-sand-shortage https://www.npr.org/2017/07/21/538472671/world-faces-global-... [2] https://www.businessinsider.com/global-sand-shortage-could-cause-damaging-effects-2018-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/global-sand-shortage-could-c... [3] https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2017/04/24/why-there-is-a-shortage-of-sand https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2017/04/24/...

YokoZar 8y ago
The shortage is for beach sand. I believe glass is made from different sort of sand.

donw 8y ago

I like the German solution for dealing with glass bottles: rather than recycling, they are made to be washed and reused. You pay a deposit when you buy a bottle of tasty beverage, and some time later, can take those bottles back to the grocery store. There, you put your used bottles into a machine which scans each bottle, and gives you an aggregate receipt for all of the bottles you returned, which you can then use to buy goods at that store. It's a great system for encouraging reuse, and we should be doing this in the US.

YokoZar 8y ago
Most states already have a refundable deposit on recyclable containers. In practice, it functions as a tax on recyclable containers: most individuals don't reclaim the deposit unless they're harvesting cans in bulk.
- ohyeshedid 8y ago
  "Most states already have a refundable deposit on recyclable containers." That's kind of a nebulous statement, but within the OP's context; there's only 10 states that have bottle deposits. I've never personally seen a can deposit; usually the money made from collecting cans is from their scrap weight value, not any kind of deposit. Are there other container deposits I'm unaware of in the states?
  - sokoloff 8y ago
    Most (all?) states with bottle deposits also charge that on cans of soda/beer as well.
    - ohyeshedid 8y ago
      You are absolutely correct; there are can deposits in those same ten states. Thank you for pointing that out.
detaro 8y ago
While I like it too, it has some issues in practice, the biggest being that it works best with standardization: E.g. there's a few common types of beer bottle, and the idea is that you can ship bottles to whatever is the closest brewery that needs bottles and they can use them. That of course breaks down if breweries do their own, custom bottles, because now you have to filter those out and ship them to their specific brewery, which a) increases processing effort and b) means shipping empty bottles over longer distances (and in the US, the distances would potentially be way larger than in Germany).

merb 8y ago

Glass depends on the Country, Germany is small and we do not have Tons of quartz sand available

barry-cotter 8y ago
The whole point of the EU is not to depend on the country. The EU is most of a continent, I’m sure it has ample sand and sandstone for making glass. German manufacture of cement isn’t much different from elsewhere, why would manufacture of glass be absent taxes and regulation?
- merb 8y ago
  well the altest reportage i've seen highlighted that germany recycles up to 50% of glas for newly made bottles. (glass bottles already get reused a lot anyway) quartz sand is available of course and we also import it, but it's actually not that cheap. in germany we have glas containers for old glas which a lot of people use, the reclycing facility only needs to filter out trash (which most often consists of metals) which is dirty simple. also it's cheaper to recycle glass. you still need high temperatures but since the glass tainted it will take way less heat (probably doesn't make that much of big difference, still above 2000 degree celsius, i think it's like 3% energy saving, but couldn't find too much articles that weren't behind closed doors). the glass still need to have a containment of a simple percentage, else it needs to be redone, but most of the time this is reached and the glass is still dirt cheap - the trash. btw. recycling of glass isn't just done by germany. the whole eu recycles glass, with a rate of 74% (2013 data: https://feve.org/glass-recycling-hits-73-eu/ https://feve.org/glass-recycling-hits-73-eu/, https://feve.org/recyclingstatistics2016/ https://feve.org/recyclingstatistics2016/) (which is a lot, but not enough for some people) and as said it's mostly bottles: "An estimated 90% of what is collected goes into creating new bottles from old ones"

dao- 8y ago

Making glass from glass isn't expensive either, kind of similar to how you'd make glass from sand: you melt it. The government needs to set the right incentives, though. Recycling of one-time use glass works quite well in Germany.

barry-cotter 8y ago
If you use industrial feedstock of known characteristics quality control is much easier than if you use glass that might include window glass, coloured glass of a colour you don’t want, random chips of ceramic, etc. Recycling of one time glass doesn’t work that well in Germany, look at wine bottles. What works well is reuse of bottles, both glass and plastic, and having big deposits on bottles, big enough that people are motivated to bring them back to the store to redeem the deposit.