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No downsides expect the environmental impact of resource extraction and refinement. A 500ml glass bottle weighs approximately 250g, which is inefficient in ter

by morsch 4y ago

No downsides expect the environmental impact of resource extraction and refinement. A 500ml glass bottle weighs approximately 250g, which is inefficient in terms of weight contained. But it's pretty insignificant compared to the weight of the passenger and their luggage. There are also reusable plastic bottles. I'm not entirely convinced the plastic is inert enough to bury it in a shallow hole, but that's something that could be established if it isn't already. Burning it for power and heat also seems fine to me as long as we're still burning orders of magnitude more oil, gas and coal.

GauntletWizard 4y ago
It's not at the scale of "Person holding a bottle of coke" that the packaging is inefficient, but at the scale of "Delivery truck holding a bottle of coke". If we were washing and recycling glass bottles of coke like they used to do with Milk, it may be possible that the resulting efficiency would be better, but washing bottles to the same sanitary level is an energy-and-water intensive process; I am not so sure.
- SoftTalker 4y ago
  They used to do exactly that with glass coke bottles. You'd buy your coke or whatever drink in glass bottles. You would pay a bottle deposit to encourage returns. You would take the empties back to the store, they would get picked up by the bottler, who would truck them back to the plant where they would get washed and sterilized and refilled. The glass bottles were heavy. The energy needed to truck them back and forth, and to clean and santize them was substantial. Most of that went away with plastic bottles. Aluminum cans have similar benefits, and replaced the steel cans that predated them. But plastic is cheaper than aluminum, or even steel.
elil17 4y ago
As for planes, it's not about the weight of the bottle vs. the weight of the passenger, it's about the energy required to move the bottle vs. the environmental impact of how the bottle was made. Small amounts of weight multiplied by many flights equals lots of fuel. American Airlines once saved $40k/year in fuel by taking out a single olive from each of the salads it served. We don't just bury our trash, that's an oversimplification. Modern landfills are designed to prevent leachate (water that soaks through the landfill) from entering the water supply. Putting something in a landfill is one of the best ways we have to safely store it. Contrast that to dumping plastic in the ocean or remelting it without adequate exhaust gas cleaning and land-filling plastic looks really nice. I'm not saying plastic pollution isn't a problem. It is. But landfills are a good solution.
RC_ITR 4y ago
>No downsides expect the environmental impact of resource extraction and refinement. Sure, but those are relatively solvable problems (they extract oil right in the middle of America's second largest city and almost no one notices) >A 500ml glass bottle weighs approximately 250g, which is inefficient in terms of weight contained. But it's pretty insignificant compared to the weight of the passenger and their luggage. There are also reusable plastic bottles. Jet fuel burnt is an incremental problem (just like radiation exposure). Even if it's a tiny amount on the margin, it's still more than we otherwise have to and keep in mind, a large US airport like SFO (which does not sell any plastic bottles of any kind) will do 250k+ aircraft movements per year, so an incremental half gallon of fuel burnt per flight is still like 2.5mn tons of CO2 unnecessarily put into the atmospheric carbon well (not counting the trucks that got the heavier bottles to the airport). >I'm not entirely convinced the plastic is inert enough to bury it in a shallow hole, but that's something that could be established if it isn't already. Burning it for power and heat also seems fine to me as long as we're still burning orders of magnitude more oil, gas and coal. Well first and foremost, please do not support burning anything other than as a last resort. We are in a climate crisis and we need to keep as much carbon out of our atmospheric well as possible. Again, it's an incremental problem. And sure, burying it is not perfect (most human actions have some amount of environmental consequence if you look closely enough), but recycling it literally doesn't work, so the only other option is the Ocean (which is weirdly what we've chosen.
- morsch 4y ago
  Too much time thinking about how to prevent a 250g bottle from flying and not enough time thinking about how to prevent the 85000g accompanying said bottle from flying. Maybe a large airport like SFO should be doing 25k aircraft movements a year instead of 250k, since we're in a climate crisis, and should not support burning anything. I guess flying is the last resort. The environmental impact of resource extraction and refinement includes its CO2 output, by the way, not just the effects it has on the immediate surroundings which you efficiently hand-waved away. And maybe LA doesn't have as good handle on things as you think[1]. [1] https://theconversation.com/los-angeles-long-troubled-history-with-urban-oil-drilling-is-nearing-an-end-after-years-of-health-concerns-175983 https://theconversation.com/los-angeles-long-troubled-histor...
louhike 4y ago
It might be true for glass, but as far as I know aluminium cans and tetrapak packaging are better solutions than plastics for a lot of beverages.
- RC_ITR 4y ago
  On what metrics? Based on what data? And btw, tetra pak is 15% plastic by weight! They're just plastic film laminated onto paper (that makes the paper unrecyclable) And aluminum cans are also plastic vaneered! Like I said, it's a miracle material that we cannot escape because it is so useful!
  - louhike 4y ago
    This data: https://digital.detritusjournal.com/articles/in-press/life-cycle-assessment-of-beverage-packaging/368 https://digital.detritusjournal.com/articles/in-press/life-c... For Tetra Pak, It's not paper, it's cardboard, and it is recycled.The three parts of tetra pak (aluminium, cardboard and plastic) are separated and recycled separatly.
    - RC_ITR 4y ago
      So just some thoughts on that data. The three factors that PET scores poorly on are Ozone depletion (not a critical concern in 2022), depletion of oil reserves (good!), and depletion of “other abiotic resources.” I mean it’s fine that those are the factors that the authors chose for their LCA, but I respectfully disagree with their choices. Take away those factors and PET wins by a mile. And speaking of what wins: yeah, a 100% recycled aluminum can that has no net new mining?Unfortunately that’s infeasible for a lot of reasons, most notably the fact that we are producing an ever increasing amount of packages, so there are literally not enough already-mined aluminum atoms to recycle for our needs. So we go back to PET being the best feasible option even under their framework. As for Tetra, welcome to the world of “shipping things to other countries is recycling” * Team Recology was at pains to point out that not all recycling is equally good for the planet. Aluminum cans and glass bottles are great; easy to reuse, handled locally, they can be back on store shelves within a week. Tetra Pak cartons, however, are shipped in giant bales to a facility in Mexico. Two giant 18-wheel trucks stuffed full of them make the 2,000-mile journey every few months, just from San Francisco alone. And that's just the first part of a carbon-intensive process of separating those plastic, paper, and aluminum layers.* [0] And that’s San Francisco. Imagine Topeka. Also, just lol at the cardboards isn’t paper thing. I’m sure it’s meaningful to you but not recyclers [1] [0] https://mashable.com/article/tetra-pak-recycle https://mashable.com/article/tetra-pak-recycle [1] https://www.afandpa.org/priorities/recycling https://www.afandpa.org/priorities/recycling

by morsch 4y ago

GauntletWizard 4y ago

It's not at the scale of "Person holding a bottle of coke" that the packaging is inefficient, but at the scale of "Delivery truck holding a bottle of coke". If we were washing and recycling glass bottles of coke like they used to do with Milk, it may be possible that the resulting efficiency would be better, but washing bottles to the same sanitary level is an energy-and-water intensive process; I am not so sure.

SoftTalker 4y ago
They used to do exactly that with glass coke bottles. You'd buy your coke or whatever drink in glass bottles. You would pay a bottle deposit to encourage returns. You would take the empties back to the store, they would get picked up by the bottler, who would truck them back to the plant where they would get washed and sterilized and refilled. The glass bottles were heavy. The energy needed to truck them back and forth, and to clean and santize them was substantial. Most of that went away with plastic bottles. Aluminum cans have similar benefits, and replaced the steel cans that predated them. But plastic is cheaper than aluminum, or even steel.

elil17 4y ago

As for planes, it's not about the weight of the bottle vs. the weight of the passenger, it's about the energy required to move the bottle vs. the environmental impact of how the bottle was made. Small amounts of weight multiplied by many flights equals lots of fuel. American Airlines once saved $40k/year in fuel by taking out a single olive from each of the salads it served. We don't just bury our trash, that's an oversimplification. Modern landfills are designed to prevent leachate (water that soaks through the landfill) from entering the water supply. Putting something in a landfill is one of the best ways we have to safely store it. Contrast that to dumping plastic in the ocean or remelting it without adequate exhaust gas cleaning and land-filling plastic looks really nice. I'm not saying plastic pollution isn't a problem. It is. But landfills are a good solution.

RC_ITR 4y ago

>No downsides expect the environmental impact of resource extraction and refinement. Sure, but those are relatively solvable problems (they extract oil right in the middle of America's second largest city and almost no one notices) >A 500ml glass bottle weighs approximately 250g, which is inefficient in terms of weight contained. But it's pretty insignificant compared to the weight of the passenger and their luggage. There are also reusable plastic bottles. Jet fuel burnt is an incremental problem (just like radiation exposure). Even if it's a tiny amount on the margin, it's still more than we otherwise have to and keep in mind, a large US airport like SFO (which does not sell any plastic bottles of any kind) will do 250k+ aircraft movements per year, so an incremental half gallon of fuel burnt per flight is still like 2.5mn tons of CO2 unnecessarily put into the atmospheric carbon well (not counting the trucks that got the heavier bottles to the airport). >I'm not entirely convinced the plastic is inert enough to bury it in a shallow hole, but that's something that could be established if it isn't already. Burning it for power and heat also seems fine to me as long as we're still burning orders of magnitude more oil, gas and coal. Well first and foremost, please do not support burning anything other than as a last resort. We are in a climate crisis and we need to keep as much carbon out of our atmospheric well as possible. Again, it's an incremental problem. And sure, burying it is not perfect (most human actions have some amount of environmental consequence if you look closely enough), but recycling it literally doesn't work, so the only other option is the Ocean (which is weirdly what we've chosen.

morsch 4y ago
Too much time thinking about how to prevent a 250g bottle from flying and not enough time thinking about how to prevent the 85000g accompanying said bottle from flying. Maybe a large airport like SFO should be doing 25k aircraft movements a year instead of 250k, since we're in a climate crisis, and should not support burning anything. I guess flying is the last resort. The environmental impact of resource extraction and refinement includes its CO2 output, by the way, not just the effects it has on the immediate surroundings which you efficiently hand-waved away. And maybe LA doesn't have as good handle on things as you think[1]. [1] https://theconversation.com/los-angeles-long-troubled-history-with-urban-oil-drilling-is-nearing-an-end-after-years-of-health-concerns-175983 https://theconversation.com/los-angeles-long-troubled-histor...

louhike 4y ago

It might be true for glass, but as far as I know aluminium cans and tetrapak packaging are better solutions than plastics for a lot of beverages.

RC_ITR 4y ago
On what metrics? Based on what data? And btw, tetra pak is 15% plastic by weight! They're just plastic film laminated onto paper (that makes the paper unrecyclable) And aluminum cans are also plastic vaneered! Like I said, it's a miracle material that we cannot escape because it is so useful!
- louhike 4y ago
  This data: https://digital.detritusjournal.com/articles/in-press/life-cycle-assessment-of-beverage-packaging/368 https://digital.detritusjournal.com/articles/in-press/life-c... For Tetra Pak, It's not paper, it's cardboard, and it is recycled.The three parts of tetra pak (aluminium, cardboard and plastic) are separated and recycled separatly.
  - RC_ITR 4y ago
    So just some thoughts on that data. The three factors that PET scores poorly on are Ozone depletion (not a critical concern in 2022), depletion of oil reserves (good!), and depletion of “other abiotic resources.” I mean it’s fine that those are the factors that the authors chose for their LCA, but I respectfully disagree with their choices. Take away those factors and PET wins by a mile. And speaking of what wins: yeah, a 100% recycled aluminum can that has no net new mining?Unfortunately that’s infeasible for a lot of reasons, most notably the fact that we are producing an ever increasing amount of packages, so there are literally not enough already-mined aluminum atoms to recycle for our needs. So we go back to PET being the best feasible option even under their framework. As for Tetra, welcome to the world of “shipping things to other countries is recycling” * Team Recology was at pains to point out that not all recycling is equally good for the planet. Aluminum cans and glass bottles are great; easy to reuse, handled locally, they can be back on store shelves within a week. Tetra Pak cartons, however, are shipped in giant bales to a facility in Mexico. Two giant 18-wheel trucks stuffed full of them make the 2,000-mile journey every few months, just from San Francisco alone. And that's just the first part of a carbon-intensive process of separating those plastic, paper, and aluminum layers.* [0] And that’s San Francisco. Imagine Topeka. Also, just lol at the cardboards isn’t paper thing. I’m sure it’s meaningful to you but not recyclers [1] [0] https://mashable.com/article/tetra-pak-recycle https://mashable.com/article/tetra-pak-recycle [1] https://www.afandpa.org/priorities/recycling https://www.afandpa.org/priorities/recycling