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The thing is we (the US) did do this at one point in time. When I was a kid you could buy a coke in a glass bottle and return it when done to be re-used by the

• brianwawok 6y ago
  The reason is money. Labor is a lot higher in the US over Mexico. Cheaper to trash and remake vs reuse. You would need a stick or carrot in the economic cost to shift behavior. Corporations are smart, they will choose the cheaper path.
• mattmanser 6y ago
  "We" didn't stop, it was cheaper for Coca-Cola to use plastic. Coca-Cola did it. Stop blaming consumers for corporate choices to slightly increase profits. Like in the UK, Tesco have just inexplicably switched from using cardboard egg containers to plastic ones. Is that my fault?
  • gambiting 6y ago
    The corporations only make those choices because they are allowed to(or rather, because they are not forced by the regulations to actually pay for the environmental cost of what they make). Yes, I recently noticed that with Tesco eggs, I have complained to them about it. And it's not our fault but we can definitely try to avoid these products as consumers. Telling companies why you avoid them is also a good thing to do.
    • Ntrails 6y ago
      We are responsible for our parliamentary representatives, and thereby our laws. It is absolutely our fault, as a society, as consumers.
      • res0nat0r 6y ago
        Good doc here on how the plastic industry pushed for "recycling" laws so they could look like the good guys, but much of the stuff you see the recycling logo on can't in fact be recycled. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/plastic-wars/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/plastic-wars/
    • munificent 6y ago
      I hate this attitude that treats corporations as having zero responsibility beyond what they are legally mandated to do. Yes, it is an observable fact that corporatism and market economics incentivize corporations to behave that way. But it is an unjustified leap to turn that into a moral claim that it is ethically acceptable for that to be true. People are incentivized to commit package theft in the US today. The odds of being caught and prosecuted are very slim, and the upside is you get free stuff. As an economic action, it is very market efficient: low barrier of entry, large number of "sellers", few cabals or controls over prices. There definitely isn't perfect information on products, but given that the cost is near-zero, that doesn't matter much. As a business, "package theft" is a great one to get into, and the market highly rewards you for doing so. However, we correctly consider people who do so as despicable shitwads who rightfully earn our scorn and condemnation. We publicly shame them, and certainly don't want to hang out with them and count them as friends. We should do the same with businesses that do morally harmful acts, regardless of whether the act is technically illegal or incentivized by market forces. It is certainly the business's fault when they do a shitty thing. They have fully agency in the choice of whether or not do so.
      • dragonwriter 6y ago
        Corporations aren't natural persons and have no ethics. They are abstract creations of law and the only legitimate expectations of corporations as corporations are their responses to structural incentives including enforced legal obligations. We can talk about the ethics of the actions of corporate decision-makers, but only while keeping in mind that structural incentives mean that decision-makers who sacrifice the narrow interests of corporate investors for ethical reasons beyond the constraints forcibly externally imposed on corporations are likely to, over time, be replaced by those who do not. If you want corporations to act consistently with some view of ethics, you aren't going to do it sustainably by moral persuasion directed at decision-makers, but only by shifting the structural incentives.
        • mattmanser 6y ago
          You're confusing their LEGAL status with their MORAL obligations. Just because there's an easy way for a collective of people to absolve their moral responsibilities by getting a little certificate that says "We're a corporation" doesn't make it right. It's just a legal accident, a mummers farce, and you defending it is morally reprehensible too. Worse still, it didn't used to be this way till some prat of an economist (probably American) starting saying so, and a bunch of people smelling easy money piled on. Companies used to care about their image, now their "care" about their shareholders (but actually their contractual bonuses and severance packages).
  • matthewheath 6y ago
    > Tesco have just inexplicably switched from using cardboard egg containers to plastic ones. They've only switched because they've run out of the pulp used to make the cardboard egg containers. It's a temporary switch, although not ideal.
    • makomk 6y ago
      I'm sure the disruption to UK recycling collections due to Covid can't have helped much with that.
  • bostik 6y ago
    > Like in the UK, Tesco have just inexplicably switched from using cardboard egg containers to plastic ones. Is that my fault? If you keep buying them, yes. Tesco's beancounters (who are legion) are certainly going to keep track of the overall cost and revenue structure. Assuming the plastic containers cost less and are sold in equal amounts, they will push forward to roll out plastic over cardboard where they can. If they want price signals, give them price signals. Vote with your wallet. We buy our eggs from a nearby farm. Tray of 30 is good for a week, and sometimes two. Better quality than what Tesco or Sainsbury's offers, too. EDIT: we also return our cardboard trays to the farm shop when we buy a new batch. Reuse >> recycle.
    • mattmanser 6y ago
      Slightly OT: I may be a bit unfair picking on Tesco as it turns out the pulp used to make egg cartons has run out because of the demand for eggs from the covid home-baking upswing, they do plan to switch back. But only because the last time they pulled this stunt back in 2011 or so claiming it was eco-friendly to use "recyclable" plastic it blew up in their face (most of which isn't recycled) .
      • bostik 6y ago
        Fair enough. Now that you mention it, I remember how during the height of the lockdown cardboard pretty much ran out. People bought more stuff online (lots of cardboard in packaging), while there was no waste paper collection to fill the demand from the supply side. There still isn't enough waste paper collection happening, really. The communal large containers are emptied at most once a week - and they have capacity for less than two days. People have a lot more cardboard packaging to get rid of, but with collection points hitting their capacity in 1/3 of the pre-covid time, there's a constant backlog to get through. > last time they pulled this stunt back in 2011 or so Wasn't aware of this historical detail. Thanks.
  • petre 6y ago
    A plastic tax would solve this. Make plastic containers at least as expensive as cardboard or aluminium cans through added taxes.
• ad_hominem 6y ago
  Maybe the reason is because of stronger food safety laws and tort law. If some guy used his bottle as a hammer for several months before turning it in for recycling, then someone cuts their hand on a jagged edge or drinks a glass sliver, that's a multi-million dollar lawsuit. Unlikely maybe but at Coca-Cola scale I imagine things like that will happen eventually. These companies would have to have sophisticated QA processes, or melt down and re-cast the bottles to ensure the food safety of their supply chain against millions of chaos monkeys. Edit: Here I just did a Google search for the butthurt downvoters that proves there is extra QA that needs to be done. From an Oregon glass bottling reuse program:[1] > Among other attributes, the machinery features an electronic sensor that uses X-ray equipment to image each bottle, detecting flaws in the glass, as well as mold and other contaminants, Bailey said. That step will reject any bottles that are chipped or contaminated. [1]: https://resource-recycling.com/recycling/2018/03/13/oregon-expands-program-for-refillable-glass-bottles/ https://resource-recycling.com/recycling/2018/03/13/oregon-e...
  • blacksmith_tb 6y ago
    That's quite a hypothetical - if there were a rash of lawsuits the lead up to Coke being sold in 2 liter plastic bottles, that would be indicative, but I am not aware of anything like that - and you'd expect there'd be no glass bottles of anything (beer, mustard, maple syrup) if that was the case.
    • ad_hominem 6y ago
      > you'd expect there'd be no glass bottles of anything (beer, mustard, maple syrup) if that was the case That's completely different - you're confusing recycling with reuse. The bottles you're referring to are made anew from glass that has been smashed into cullet and re-cast into new glass. What the commenters above are advocating are thicker glass bottles that are washed and reused as-is, i.e. reuse. Different QA concerns when you're manufacturing fresh glass versus collecting it from randos
      • layoutIfNeeded 6y ago
• jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago
  A bunch of states have bottle deposit laws. Stuff goes to recycling rather than direct reuse, but still, the concept is to use the deposit as an incentive to reduce litter and increase recycling rates. At the end of the day, if we want companies to do more sustainable things than using single use packages that cost nearly nothing to dump in a landfill (or litter), then we need to start charging them enough to incentive sustainable behavior. And sadly few politicians want to be the person that raises prices on bottles of milk or racks of beer.
  • rhacker 6y ago
    There's at least one company in the west (US) that still does this. Have you tried Strauss farms milk? The creamtop is absolutely delicious. There's a $2 bottle deposit which encourages the bottles to be returned. Only problem is you can only get this milk at higher end grocery stores or fancy co-ops.
    • jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago
      Yeah, Strauss is great. Sadly it's getting harder to find their cream. Everyone seems to carry the ice cream tho.
      • beenBoutIT 6y ago
        Strauss is great but they need to use amber glass bottles to protect their delicious milk from light.
  • Steltek 6y ago
    Personal anecdote time, I guess. My state has a bottle deposit law. I don't return anything but it still goes into recycling. We buy very few individually packaged things, I honestly can't be bothered to collect large bulky containers and bring it back to a redemption center for a lousy $5 or less. Generally speaking, our recycling outweighs our trash and (commercial) compost put together. Mostly the bottle deposit doesn't change my recycling or purchasing behavior and it only annoys me that I'm "throwing money away". I think the biggest reason to keep it is because it's a perverted form of social welfare for homeless trash pickers who have a different tradeoff of time for money than myself.
• refurb 6y ago
  Moving to plastic significantly reduced the cost of transportation and the resulting CO2 emissions (but increased CO2 through production of plastic - net?). Better to haul a trailer full of coke that 98% product and 2% plastic than one that’s 90% product and 10% glass.
  • Scoundreller 6y ago
    You can fit more plastic-packaged product too. Still waiting for them to sell it in cubes though.
• mythrwy 6y ago
  I was in Guatemala in the early 90's on a bus and it stopped near a stand with people selling soda. The procedure was open the soda bottle, pour the soda into a plastic bag, put a straw in the bag and tie it. The vendor kept the bottle (presumably you could keep the bottle yourself if you paid the deposit with your soda). I kept waiting to see a bag leak or some other disaster but it seemed to mostly work. You couldn't put your soda down though. Maybe it was a scheme to encourage rapid consumption or accidental loss and sell more sodas, not sure.