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Is it more ecological to use glass instead of plastic? With plastic there is trash to deal with, but glass is heavier thus will take more energy to deal with l

Is it more ecological to use glass instead of plastic? With plastic there is trash to deal with, but glass is heavier thus will take more energy to deal with logistically. Recycling is not energy free either, and there is plenty of loss to deal with there. Plastic is very cheap to manufacture partly because its manufacture is so easy. And right now it seems like energy consumption is a far larger worry than trash at the ecological level.

JKCalhoun 5y ago
Good point. But I suspect we used to produce these things more "locally". And when they were transported we relied on trains, not trucks and highways. But I'm just guessing.
jhgb 5y ago
> With plastic there is trash to deal with, but glass is heavier thus will take more energy to deal with logistically. My family has been using the same set of glasses for canning for decades.
- scrollaway 5y ago
  Right but is your family an outlier or an average? Anecdotes are not evidence, and what matters is how everything would pan out in the real world. When we were using glass jars for everything, it's not like glass jars were not actively being produced. I don't think these are unanswerable questions but i highly doubt it's as simple as "replace plastic with glass". Aluminum may be a better solution, one that doesn't use up a lot of sand, for example.
  - jhgb 5y ago
    > is your family an outlier or an average? Well, I lived in a socialist country; as a consequence, DIY was the default for obtaining stuff. So quite average I guess.
johannes1234321 5y ago
I don't have the studies at hand, but the answer is a big "it depends" If you have local production and re-use of glass it can be more energy efficient to use the more heavy glass. The further the transport, the worse it becomes. But there is a second factor to it, besides energy use: microplastics are a problem and most plastics can only be used for "energetic usage" - being burned in a power plant, which causes probelmatic gases needing filtering and then disposal of those filters ... re-use of broken glass is elementary in glass production and even if not recycled less of a problem for the environment.

JKCalhoun 5y ago

Good point. But I suspect we used to produce these things more "locally". And when they were transported we relied on trains, not trucks and highways. But I'm just guessing.

jhgb 5y ago

> With plastic there is trash to deal with, but glass is heavier thus will take more energy to deal with logistically. My family has been using the same set of glasses for canning for decades.

scrollaway 5y ago
Right but is your family an outlier or an average? Anecdotes are not evidence, and what matters is how everything would pan out in the real world. When we were using glass jars for everything, it's not like glass jars were not actively being produced. I don't think these are unanswerable questions but i highly doubt it's as simple as "replace plastic with glass". Aluminum may be a better solution, one that doesn't use up a lot of sand, for example.
- jhgb 5y ago
  > is your family an outlier or an average? Well, I lived in a socialist country; as a consequence, DIY was the default for obtaining stuff. So quite average I guess.

johannes1234321 5y ago

I don't have the studies at hand, but the answer is a big "it depends" If you have local production and re-use of glass it can be more energy efficient to use the more heavy glass. The further the transport, the worse it becomes. But there is a second factor to it, besides energy use: microplastics are a problem and most plastics can only be used for "energetic usage" - being burned in a power plant, which causes probelmatic gases needing filtering and then disposal of those filters ... re-use of broken glass is elementary in glass production and even if not recycled less of a problem for the environment.