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Why glass? Glass is quite recyclable but requires lots of energy to recycle. As soda bottles and milk bottles they might last 20 uses. Glass is also much hea

by mc32 5y ago

Why glass? Glass is quite recyclable but requires lots of energy to recycle. As soda bottles and milk bottles they might last 20 uses. Glass is also much heavier requiring more energy to transport.

3pt14159 5y ago
In every part of Canada I've lived in there has been a well developed reuse system. In Ontario, for example, a beer bottle is used around 100 times on average. Reuse should be way better integrated into our systems. If I could bring a resuable bag back to any supermarket to get the $1 fee back, it would be so much easier to justify buying reusable bags that really last a long time. The trouble is I never remember to bring it with me in the morning before work and I grocery shop on my way back home.
- loonster 5y ago
  My family stores the bags in the trunk of our car. They are always available for random shopping trips. Public transportation would make reusable bags much more inconvenient for our family.
- fnimick 5y ago
  I keep a couple in every bag I use regularly (gym bag, work bag, briefcase, etc) so I'm never without if I decide to stop by the store on the way home. That way you don't have to proactively remember to bring it!
- arsome 5y ago
  Beer bottles are typically only reused if you say, bring them to The Beer Store or something similar. If you toss them in your municipal bin like me, my understanding is they basically just smash them and use the glass bits in other products like asphalt as it's just not worth the energy cost to actually recycle it. Aluminum cans are probably a better bet for recycling if you're just using the municipal bins. They're profitable enough that people routinely come steal the cans from my bins.
  - cloverich 5y ago
    But if the bottles, or even a subset of them, were standardized, it would be possible to have some bottle specific re-use (not recycle) programs. OP was I think giving an example of one that works. Perhaps it would be possible to extend it. I can understand there are some product specific's that limit this in some cases, but if I drink beer and topo chico and a few other similar drinks, it seems unlikely they couldn't all use the same bottle.
    - mc32 5y ago
      A lot of beer bottles conform to an industry standard (the ones with paper labels where anyone can slap their own label) and get reused. However, the reuse frequency is from 15 to 20 times before they begin to fail inspection tests and have to be taken out of circulation (and recycled or dumped). Recycling that glass is expensive. The big advantage of glass from a consumer pov is that its inert and does not react with contents.
      - thaumasiotes 5y ago
        > The big advantage of glass from a consumer pov is that its inert and does not react with contents. This is a pretty significant advantage, but the disadvantage is that sometimes you drop it.
- gruez 5y ago
  >In Ontario, for example, a beer bottle is used around 100 times on average. fact check: no, only 15 https://www.thestar.com/life/food_wine/2013/06/28/the_average_beer_bottle_is_refilled_15_times_in_its_environmentallyfriendly_life_cycle.html https://www.thestar.com/life/food_wine/2013/06/28/the_averag...
  - 3pt14159 5y ago
    Oh, ok thanks for updating my view. I clearly remember hearing it was 99% but must be either misremembering or the original source was wrong. I'd still rather have re-use via glass or recycling via aluminum than plastic.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
hatchnyc 5y ago
You are not wrong, but in some countries they collect, wash, and and reuse glass (and even special kinds of plastic) bottles. According to my parents that used to be standard practice in the United States. Someone should do the math first obviously but it seems like a great idea to me. If bottling is done locally you aren’t transporting the bottles long distance, and quite significantly in my mind glass is inert so if it does get into the environment, it isn’t leaching microplastics into the environment for the next thousand years.
- OneEyedRobot 5y ago
  >According to my parents that used to be standard practice in the United States. You're making me feel old. I used to sort bottles as a kid. Soft drinks are just another example of gigantism in corporate life, economy of scale uber alles. There was a time when practically every small town had one or more bottling plants, the owners were pillars of the community sponsoring softball teams and the like. Delivery trucks typically had shelving rather than bays. Following that there was a huge spate of consolidation. Small distributors/bottlers had their franchises taken away, canning became owned by the mothership and absolutely huge. The more centralized the more of a pain it becomes to sort/return/clean bottles. I suppose it's like the history of car dealerships as they become fewer and larger. For that matter, a significant (most?) percentage of the US used to be self-employed instead of wage slaves.
  - gruez 5y ago
    > For that matter, a significant (most?) percentage of the US used to be self-employed instead of wage slaves. Are you sure that's not just due to people moving away from agriculture? A family farm is a thing, but not really a family factory.
    - panzagl 5y ago
      More likely retail- in my town the bookstore, stationary store, newsstand, hardware stores, etc. were all family owned until the big box stores opened up two towns over.
JKCalhoun 5y ago
Places with cheap energy (e.g,. the Columbia River with hydroelectric power) could inexpensively recycle glass, aluminum. Of course it does take energy to get the recyclables to these places. Curious — are trains no longer efficient?
- bequanna 5y ago
  > Places with cheap energy… I’ve always wondered about colocating manufacturing near cheap power sources. Is this actually possible? Isn’t the power generated already being used? If it is possible, why doesn’t every manufacturing plant just do this to reduce a huge input cost?
  - Ekaros 5y ago
    Energy transfer losses are pretty marginal around 2%. Compared to labour availability, shipping resources and products; and land, it is not so big deal. Unless it's very energy intensive industry.
  - JKCalhoun 5y ago
    Pretty sure aluminum extraction plants do this. As well as Bitcoin miners. ;-) Recently ... where was I, Eugene, Oregon? There was a shuttered Coca Cola bottling plant. I remember a huge one in Kansas City as well. Maybe someone with expertise can weigh in — but it seems like we used to, as an example, bottle things a lot more locally. It meant factory jobs in the area, transportation (of Coke) was shorter since there was probably a bottling plant in your state (or a neighboring one). I don't know. I feel a lot was lost.
    - blacksmith_tb 5y ago
      Most major metro areas in the US continue to have soft drink bottling plants (though they're using plastic bottles and aluminum cans these days), since transporting huge volumes of water is more expensive than smaller amounts of flavoring and coloring. Eugene OR (pop ~175K) may be slightly too small for that to be practical, but here in Portland I bike to work past two active bottling plants.

by mc32 5y ago

Why glass? Glass is quite recyclable but requires lots of energy to recycle. As soda bottles and milk bottles they might last 20 uses. Glass is also much heavier requiring more energy to transport.

3pt14159 5y ago

In every part of Canada I've lived in there has been a well developed reuse system. In Ontario, for example, a beer bottle is used around 100 times on average. Reuse should be way better integrated into our systems. If I could bring a resuable bag back to any supermarket to get the $1 fee back, it would be so much easier to justify buying reusable bags that really last a long time. The trouble is I never remember to bring it with me in the morning before work and I grocery shop on my way back home.

loonster 5y ago
My family stores the bags in the trunk of our car. They are always available for random shopping trips. Public transportation would make reusable bags much more inconvenient for our family.
fnimick 5y ago
I keep a couple in every bag I use regularly (gym bag, work bag, briefcase, etc) so I'm never without if I decide to stop by the store on the way home. That way you don't have to proactively remember to bring it!
arsome 5y ago
Beer bottles are typically only reused if you say, bring them to The Beer Store or something similar. If you toss them in your municipal bin like me, my understanding is they basically just smash them and use the glass bits in other products like asphalt as it's just not worth the energy cost to actually recycle it. Aluminum cans are probably a better bet for recycling if you're just using the municipal bins. They're profitable enough that people routinely come steal the cans from my bins.
- cloverich 5y ago
  But if the bottles, or even a subset of them, were standardized, it would be possible to have some bottle specific re-use (not recycle) programs. OP was I think giving an example of one that works. Perhaps it would be possible to extend it. I can understand there are some product specific's that limit this in some cases, but if I drink beer and topo chico and a few other similar drinks, it seems unlikely they couldn't all use the same bottle.
  - mc32 5y ago
    A lot of beer bottles conform to an industry standard (the ones with paper labels where anyone can slap their own label) and get reused. However, the reuse frequency is from 15 to 20 times before they begin to fail inspection tests and have to be taken out of circulation (and recycled or dumped). Recycling that glass is expensive. The big advantage of glass from a consumer pov is that its inert and does not react with contents.
    - thaumasiotes 5y ago
      > The big advantage of glass from a consumer pov is that its inert and does not react with contents. This is a pretty significant advantage, but the disadvantage is that sometimes you drop it.
gruez 5y ago
>In Ontario, for example, a beer bottle is used around 100 times on average. fact check: no, only 15 https://www.thestar.com/life/food_wine/2013/06/28/the_average_beer_bottle_is_refilled_15_times_in_its_environmentallyfriendly_life_cycle.html https://www.thestar.com/life/food_wine/2013/06/28/the_averag...
- 3pt14159 5y ago
  Oh, ok thanks for updating my view. I clearly remember hearing it was 99% but must be either misremembering or the original source was wrong. I'd still rather have re-use via glass or recycling via aluminum than plastic.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]

hatchnyc 5y ago

You are not wrong, but in some countries they collect, wash, and and reuse glass (and even special kinds of plastic) bottles. According to my parents that used to be standard practice in the United States. Someone should do the math first obviously but it seems like a great idea to me. If bottling is done locally you aren’t transporting the bottles long distance, and quite significantly in my mind glass is inert so if it does get into the environment, it isn’t leaching microplastics into the environment for the next thousand years.

OneEyedRobot 5y ago
>According to my parents that used to be standard practice in the United States. You're making me feel old. I used to sort bottles as a kid. Soft drinks are just another example of gigantism in corporate life, economy of scale uber alles. There was a time when practically every small town had one or more bottling plants, the owners were pillars of the community sponsoring softball teams and the like. Delivery trucks typically had shelving rather than bays. Following that there was a huge spate of consolidation. Small distributors/bottlers had their franchises taken away, canning became owned by the mothership and absolutely huge. The more centralized the more of a pain it becomes to sort/return/clean bottles. I suppose it's like the history of car dealerships as they become fewer and larger. For that matter, a significant (most?) percentage of the US used to be self-employed instead of wage slaves.
- gruez 5y ago
  > For that matter, a significant (most?) percentage of the US used to be self-employed instead of wage slaves. Are you sure that's not just due to people moving away from agriculture? A family farm is a thing, but not really a family factory.
  - panzagl 5y ago
    More likely retail- in my town the bookstore, stationary store, newsstand, hardware stores, etc. were all family owned until the big box stores opened up two towns over.

JKCalhoun 5y ago

Places with cheap energy (e.g,. the Columbia River with hydroelectric power) could inexpensively recycle glass, aluminum. Of course it does take energy to get the recyclables to these places. Curious — are trains no longer efficient?

bequanna 5y ago
> Places with cheap energy… I’ve always wondered about colocating manufacturing near cheap power sources. Is this actually possible? Isn’t the power generated already being used? If it is possible, why doesn’t every manufacturing plant just do this to reduce a huge input cost?
- Ekaros 5y ago
  Energy transfer losses are pretty marginal around 2%. Compared to labour availability, shipping resources and products; and land, it is not so big deal. Unless it's very energy intensive industry.
- JKCalhoun 5y ago
  Pretty sure aluminum extraction plants do this. As well as Bitcoin miners. ;-) Recently ... where was I, Eugene, Oregon? There was a shuttered Coca Cola bottling plant. I remember a huge one in Kansas City as well. Maybe someone with expertise can weigh in — but it seems like we used to, as an example, bottle things a lot more locally. It meant factory jobs in the area, transportation (of Coke) was shorter since there was probably a bottling plant in your state (or a neighboring one). I don't know. I feel a lot was lost.
  - blacksmith_tb 5y ago
    Most major metro areas in the US continue to have soft drink bottling plants (though they're using plastic bottles and aluminum cans these days), since transporting huge volumes of water is more expensive than smaller amounts of flavoring and coloring. Eugene OR (pop ~175K) may be slightly too small for that to be practical, but here in Portland I bike to work past two active bottling plants.