8 ms·
What are the arguments against all beverages using those standardized reusable beer bottles? Why melt down perfectly good glass when it can be safely reused a s
by jagger27 5y ago
What are the arguments against all beverages using those standardized reusable beer bottles? Why melt down perfectly good glass when it can be safely reused a solid dozen times before finally being recycled?
I’m wondering how much glass bottles contribute to transportation-related emissions versus aluminum and plastic.
- depereo 5y agoI can think of one - you do not know the heat/impact stress it has received when out of your custody, and don't want to be responsible for its unexpected shattering while your client is using it. Reforging adds some guarantees.
- ordiel 5y agoOf course you dont want that... In the US, where they will sue you for looking wrong at people or they will rally up a crowd in protest... In the rest of the world where people are normal that is not a problem. Specially considetong that if the glass is already fragile it will either crack during cleaning or while being transported. If the bottle can handle being clinking on the bands while being filled up, I am sure it can stand being on the fragile hands of some folks
- ARandomerDude 5y ago> In the rest of the world where people are normal that is not a problem. That seems overly broad. The rest of the world includes some pretty nasty places.
- _Microft 5y agoThis is not a nice comment and a rather reliable way to either get your comments downvoted, flagged or to get your account banned eventually. There are some guidelines for commenting linked in the footer of the page. For your convenience: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#comments https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#comments
- chana_masala 5y agoCould you specifically call out what is wrong? I fail to see it other than you being offended by the commenter's view
- _Microft 5y agoGeneralizing to all US americans and implying that they are not 'normal' compared to the rest of the world is certainly not nice, is it? And I say that as someone who isn't even directly addressed by that statement.
- coryrc 5y agoIn the US, truth is a defense for libel. It would be correct to generalize North Koreans aren't normal due to shared trauma. Living in the US but having traveled overseas, the US seems to have its own traumas.
- spiderice 5y agoThis isn't a court of law. And legal definitions aren't super relevant in day to day conversation. You could say any country isn't "normal" compared to the rest of the world, and then find some "true" way of defending it. That doesn't make it nice though.
- coryrc 5y agoTone policing is used to reinforce the status quo. It's not nice to talk about the crimes someone is abetting; how many dead in Iraq due to the unnecessary invasion? The 40,000 US citizens who die every year from automobiles? The hundred thousand innocents dead because some people won't wear masks? It's certainly reasonable to suppose people of the unchallenged world superpower 1992-2019 are not normal.
- spiderice 5y ago
- jagger27 5y agoIn Ontario we seem to manage this fairly well. 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...
- klyrs 5y agoTo answer GP's concern, they're x-rayed in reprocessing, which would detect unsound bottles.
- Maximus9000 5y agoIt's too bad glass beer bottles seem to be going out of fashion these days in Ontario. Instead, people seem to be moving to aluminum cans. I miss the old days when you look at the bottom of a beer bottle and see a ring of wear because that glass had been recycled dozens of times (just washed and reused). You can see the ring of wear in this old bottle: https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-jqHUfssta_Y/Tbt_aoiPgjI/AAAAAAAABg4/LXaPmpiqqwA/s1600/IMG_6613.jpg https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-jqHUfssta_Y/Tbt_aoiPgjI/AAAAAAAAB...
- mdtusz 5y agoThis is still visible on a fair bit of beer - Sleemans sticks out in memory the most as always having wear rings on their clear bottles.
- VBprogrammer 5y agoMilk bottles Of my youth and glass bottles of Scotland's famous Irn Bru seemed to survive without causing death and injury to everyone coming close to one. I think you are being overly paranoid.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 5y agoI mean, that you heard of? I'm not sure it's possible to know with certainty what the drawbacks of mass glass reuse are without trying it. Probably there won't be a major issue but these liability questions should probably be ironed out. The bigger question to be is the relative current carbon intensity of reuse vs. disposable containers. Sure in a future where energy is generated without involving carbon, it may make sense to recycle glass more than we do today. But . . . that's the future state, not the state today.
- _Microft 5y agoThe article says that in Europe over 50% of the mass of new glass is actually recycled glass already. For bottles, I think, the system we have in Germany proves that it can be done. The bottle type that I mentioned in another comment here already is being used for 50 years now and about 5 billion of these bottles were produced so far. I guess we have seen all of the problems already that could possibly arise from that.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 5y agoOh, I know that glass can be recycled. That is not a question to me. What I'm less sure about is whether it can reliably be recycled without being reforged. I'm also not sure whether glass recycling is much better on a net carbon front than manufacturing. I'm sure it saves the cost of silica mining, but then there is the cost of shipping the returns and getting rid of impurities . . . it would be an interesting thing to know.
- vidarh 5y agoNorway had reuse of glass bottles for decades. The pressure to switch to plastic came entirely from the drinks manufacturers over cost. Safety was never an issue.
- _Microft 5y agoWe have something like that in Germany. For consumption at home, mineral water or carbonated lemonade beverages are usually available in standardized bottles [0] and bottle crates [1] (which can be conveniently stacked). The bottles can be refilled up to 50 times until they need to be taken out of the cycle. You can usually return them at shops that sell them, even if you haven't bought them at this exact shop. There is a (small) deposit per bottle and crate that incentivizes returning them. [0] (german) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normbrunnenflasche https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normbrunnenflasche [1] (german) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getr%C3%A4nkekiste https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getr%C3%A4nkekiste
- chana_masala 5y agoWie weist man wie viele Male eine Flasche schon genutzt wird?
- coryrc 5y agoI would assume there isn't a magic number which can't be exceeded, but something which can be observed usually happens around that time, i.e. the glass becomes visibly cloudy and it's undesirable to sell new product in them, as opposed to invisible cracks in carbon fiber composites which require ultrasound to detect.
- _Microft 5y agoParent comment said: "How does one tell how often a bottle was used already?" I don't think one can tell. How I would go about it: calculate the average number of reuse by knowing how many bottles my factory has filled and how many new bottles it needed to introduce/throw out for that. I would also sort out bottles only depending on wear and tear. As long as the bottle is good enough, reuse it one more time.
- dghughes 5y agoWhere I live we had glass beverage bottles until 2008 it was common to see wear marks on the bottles. Both for beer and pop bottles it was obvious they weren't new some even had chips.
- ghaff 5y agoWeight in transportation systems is probably one factor. I'd also observe that more and more mid-range to higher-end beers are shifting to cans. It used to be almost impossible to find canned beer (which we preferred for canoe camping) outside of the mass market BudMillCoors stuff.
- germinalphrase 5y agoThe lining material got better. Back in the day, canned beer tastes off. Today, that’s not a factor. For canoe camping, I go bagged red wine or brandy. Keeps the weight down on the portage.
- hinkley 5y agoGlass and ceramic share something in common. When they are forged entirely of virgin material, they are more prone to deformation and stress fracturing. So you pulverize old pieces and add them into the mix prior to firing. If it’s stronger, you can make it lighter and still meet safety margins. This makes preconsumer recycling virtually mandatory, and makes post consumer a more attractive option.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 5y agoGlass bottles were very common in Germany, as there was a standing threat that a punitive deposit on single-use bottles would be introduced if the fraction of drinks sold in reusable bottles dropped too low. Once that happened (fraction dropped, punitive deposit was introduced, and thus the threat was gone), glass bottles mostly disappeared. This strongly indicates that there is some factor that makes them undesirable. My guess would be that the reverse logistics are so expensive that it doesn't make economical sense, which is also a good hint that it may not make sense ecologically either. Because you save the production of the bottles, but now you have to transport the heavy glass, twice, for each drink sold.
- NegativeLatency 5y agoI think you’d have to measure that as calculating the total impact of each option is quite difficult to get accurate. Additionally some of the costs may be externalized in the case of pollution or trash from single use bottles.
- simlan 5y agoNone of those bottles disappeared. Beer, juices etc are still very commonly sold in reusable glass bottles that re returned. What happened is that the discounters found the new system with deposits on plastics very appealing because it fit into there logistics better than offering glass bottled drinks. Also the remaining the plastic bottles normalized there use similar to glass bottles because they perceived waste production from those bottles was gone.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 5y agoI believe water for example was almost exclusively sold in glass bottles, and soft drinks were often sold in either glass or refillable PET. While all of these still exist, the single use bottles became much more common for these use cases. The only exception I can think of is beer and maybe some premium juices.