5 ms·

Meanwhile for years people used to say glass last forever and thus instead we should use biodegradable plastic...

by speeder 5y ago

ouid 5y ago
When you say people, who are you referring to? I have never heard anyone claim that.
wlll 5y ago
I (from the uk) have never heard that personally.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
neltnerb 5y ago
What! Where did they say that! I've always been told to recycle glass because it's easy to make new glass from, is this a recent thing? Sounds like malicious advertising from people making PLA garbage, which I mean literally since "compostable plastic" rarely is without expensive industrial composting equipment (instead it contaminates the compost so you can't use it) and PLA (while theoretically recyclable) is not so in basically any curbside recycling anywhere. If you collect it special and find a specialty recycler it can be done, but it's hardly going to fall apart sitting in a landfill in an anaerobic (oxygen-free) environment.
- foobarian 5y ago
  My understanding is that recycling glass is energy intensive to the point where it's not economical, leading recycling programs like in our local town to choose to dump the collected glass instead. The most effective recycling seems to be for aluminum due to high energy cost of converting the ore, and low cost of melting the metal.
  - Natsu 5y ago
    It might not be quite the same as recycling bottles, but I worked for a cut & tempering shop where we would recycle all of our waste glass. We recycled many tons of waste glass and were paid for it.
  - neltnerb 5y ago
    For sure aluminum recycling is more cost effective than glass recycling, but I've definitely never in my life heard the suggestion that it's better to literally put glass in landfills instead... that really sounds like the kind of topsy-turvy logic you get out of a company pushing plastic. Granted this is a biased source, but they claim that "Energy costs drop about 2-3% for every 10% cullet used in the manufacturing process," [1] so it really seems like in principle it should be less expensive to recycle it (by a little bit) and that if it's more costly than making it fresh it's due to logistics rather than any fundamental manufacturing cost. [1] https://www.gpi.org/glass-recycling-facts https://www.gpi.org/glass-recycling-facts
    - brnt 5y ago
      People often confuse money cost with environmental cost (at least it makes it easy to know who published the study ahem). Here in NL the monetary cost for melting glass is about 85% of sourcing new glass. So it's a small win. The envirnmental cost reduction is the raw materials saved. Beer bottles are almost all reused for a number of times though, greatly improving their environmental impact. Wish they would do the same for wine bottles.
    - foobarian 5y ago
      Yeah looks like fully recycled glass at best requires 30% less energy input than virgin glass. And the single-stream logistics are enough to make that uneconomical, unfortunately. Aluminum recycling energy input is 95% less than smelting - that is a very nice gain, meaning you get 20x the material for the same energy cost vs. 1.42x.
      - numpad0 5y ago
        Glass bottles are also 10-20x heavier for capacity than aluminum or plastic bottles, like <60% content fraction vs >95%. Absolute amounts of that recycling energy inputs are apples and oranges, but with as much as 50% mass and 25% volume worth for delivered products having to be recovered in order for glass bottles to be recycled, or even reused, I can't picture microscopic oranges here.
  - Baeocystin 5y ago
    As I mentioned in another comment, most crushed mixed glass is used as landfill cap between the layers. It's not 'just' being trashed- the cap is an important function in modern waste management.
willvarfar 5y ago
I recall people in the UK saying in the 80s we should use plastic bags instead of paper to save the trees. But cordial was still sold in glass bottles with a deposit. The only negative sentiment I recall for glass was a belief that discarded bottles started forest fires and killed animals that crept into them but couldn’t get back out.
dredmorbius 5y ago
Glass degrades (physically) ultimately to inert pebbles or sand. Not sure who you were hearing this from, if you were, but it was a bogus argument.
gumby 5y ago
As was posted on HN a few weeks ago this seems to have been part of an advertising / propaganda effort by the plastics companies, alongside the idea of recyclable plastics.

Meanwhile for years people used to say glass last forever and thus instead we should use biodegradable plastic...

ouid 5y ago

When you say people, who are you referring to? I have never heard anyone claim that.

wlll 5y ago

I (from the uk) have never heard that personally.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

neltnerb 5y ago

What! Where did they say that! I've always been told to recycle glass because it's easy to make new glass from, is this a recent thing? Sounds like malicious advertising from people making PLA garbage, which I mean literally since "compostable plastic" rarely is without expensive industrial composting equipment (instead it contaminates the compost so you can't use it) and PLA (while theoretically recyclable) is not so in basically any curbside recycling anywhere. If you collect it special and find a specialty recycler it can be done, but it's hardly going to fall apart sitting in a landfill in an anaerobic (oxygen-free) environment.

foobarian 5y ago
My understanding is that recycling glass is energy intensive to the point where it's not economical, leading recycling programs like in our local town to choose to dump the collected glass instead. The most effective recycling seems to be for aluminum due to high energy cost of converting the ore, and low cost of melting the metal.
- Natsu 5y ago
  It might not be quite the same as recycling bottles, but I worked for a cut & tempering shop where we would recycle all of our waste glass. We recycled many tons of waste glass and were paid for it.
- neltnerb 5y ago
  For sure aluminum recycling is more cost effective than glass recycling, but I've definitely never in my life heard the suggestion that it's better to literally put glass in landfills instead... that really sounds like the kind of topsy-turvy logic you get out of a company pushing plastic. Granted this is a biased source, but they claim that "Energy costs drop about 2-3% for every 10% cullet used in the manufacturing process," [1] so it really seems like in principle it should be less expensive to recycle it (by a little bit) and that if it's more costly than making it fresh it's due to logistics rather than any fundamental manufacturing cost. [1] https://www.gpi.org/glass-recycling-facts https://www.gpi.org/glass-recycling-facts
  - brnt 5y ago
    People often confuse money cost with environmental cost (at least it makes it easy to know who published the study ahem). Here in NL the monetary cost for melting glass is about 85% of sourcing new glass. So it's a small win. The envirnmental cost reduction is the raw materials saved. Beer bottles are almost all reused for a number of times though, greatly improving their environmental impact. Wish they would do the same for wine bottles.
  - foobarian 5y ago
    Yeah looks like fully recycled glass at best requires 30% less energy input than virgin glass. And the single-stream logistics are enough to make that uneconomical, unfortunately. Aluminum recycling energy input is 95% less than smelting - that is a very nice gain, meaning you get 20x the material for the same energy cost vs. 1.42x.
    - numpad0 5y ago
      Glass bottles are also 10-20x heavier for capacity than aluminum or plastic bottles, like <60% content fraction vs >95%. Absolute amounts of that recycling energy inputs are apples and oranges, but with as much as 50% mass and 25% volume worth for delivered products having to be recovered in order for glass bottles to be recycled, or even reused, I can't picture microscopic oranges here.
- Baeocystin 5y ago
  As I mentioned in another comment, most crushed mixed glass is used as landfill cap between the layers. It's not 'just' being trashed- the cap is an important function in modern waste management.

willvarfar 5y ago

I recall people in the UK saying in the 80s we should use plastic bags instead of paper to save the trees. But cordial was still sold in glass bottles with a deposit. The only negative sentiment I recall for glass was a belief that discarded bottles started forest fires and killed animals that crept into them but couldn’t get back out.

dredmorbius 5y ago

Glass degrades (physically) ultimately to inert pebbles or sand. Not sure who you were hearing this from, if you were, but it was a bogus argument.

gumby 5y ago

As was posted on HN a few weeks ago this seems to have been part of an advertising / propaganda effort by the plastics companies, alongside the idea of recyclable plastics.