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Glass 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 d
by tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
Glass 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.