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Very nice. I live alone and often I'm baffled by the sheer amount of garbage that my urban lifestyle generates. I was not alive in the 80's but I was told that

• dmitrygr 3y ago
  Plastic bottles weigh less and can be made thinner. Transportation costs dominate the cost of most consumables
  • b112 3y ago
    Which sort of highlights local vs national production and shipping. The local milkman of the 50s, did better with glass collecting and delivering milk. The national enterprise benefits, as you say, from weight reduction.
    • actionfromafar 3y ago
      The enterprise "benefits" because it completely off-loads the environmental impact to the tax payers.
      • b112 3y ago
        It does with glass, and the cleaning solutions, and the water used during re-use. I'm sure glass is far more environmentally sound, but to claim that glass production, glass cleaning(and the harsh chemicals and their production cost to the environment), and water for flushing afterwards are not relevant, would be wrong. So every business off-loads some environmental impact to the tax payer. My point? While your statement is true, it has nothing to do with how the business decision is made re: cost to the business. The metric used there is "what saves the business money".
    • fendy3002 3y ago
      And as the cost of workforce increase, or in order to generate even more profit, using plastics enables industrial automation and removal of the delivery workforce.
      • rad_gruchalski 3y ago
        German Flaschenpost kindly disagrees.
    • twobitshifter 3y ago
      The only way we get this hyper optimized bottle cap is with a dominant global ketchup superpower. They will save enormous amounts of money with this cap, because of the giant volume of sales that they do.
  • oven9342 3y ago
    Glass bottles have to be reprocessed later. Forever pollutants offer more benefits for the industry. Short term benefit and profit margin dominate the calculation of if life environments deserve to continue unpolluted or they deserve to be destroyed in the name of compound interest.
  • throwaway88409 3y ago
    Transport cost is one factor, but even in countries where glass bottles are sold alongside plastic ones they are unpopular to the end user themselves because of their inconvenience. The common 2kg×6 PET bottles format is too heavy for glass bottles, so you end up paying more for heavier 1.5kgx6 bottles that are going to last you less.
    • rad_gruchalski 3y ago
      Now check the price per litre and ask your decision makers to introduce a deposit system for glass and plastic bottles.
    • rightbyte 3y ago
      Ketchup should be in a jar rather than bottle really. You can't get the ketchup out of glass bottles. Or atleast 5yo me couldn't. And that was about the last time I had those.
      • biftek 3y ago
        I never understood why we put condiments in slim/squeeze bottles, I would love to buy a jar of ketchup.
    • peoplefromibiza 3y ago
      > because of their inconvenience IMO it's simply habits no one would buy beer or wine in a plastic bottle, because it feels wrong (and it is if you ask me). Here in Italy nobody in their right mind buys tomato sauce in plastic bottles, our granmas would come to haunt us at night if we did. but we buy water in plastic bottles ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
      • lupire 3y ago
        Trying to make sense of the world is the surest way to go mad.
      • callalex 3y ago
        Boxed wine comes in a plastic container. Beer goes off rather quickly without excellent storage, which is why cheap beer has settled on aluminum cans which preserve well while being cheaper and lighter than glass.
  • morsch 3y ago
    > Transportation costs dominate the cost of most consumables That was surprising to me and, uh, no, they don't, unless you're considering building materials (i.e. rocks). It's not easy to find numbers, but for milk in Germany, it appears to be around 10%, about the same as packaging. Milk should be worse than many other products because it's cheap and heavy, on the other hand it's rarely shipped over great distances. [1] Another report [2] considers transportation costs relative to the value of the goods transported, which isn't exactly the same as "how much of the consumer price is transportation", but surely related, and has 2.7% for foodstuffs (and 55% for rocks). I mean, I'm sure it varies widely for different kinds of consumables, but overall, transporting stuff is cheap. I think even in terms of CO2, which is certainly underrepresented in cost currently, production dominates transport for most goods in a grocery store, apart from produce shipped by air. [1] https://www.agrarheute.com/tier/rind/78-cent-fuer-trinkmilch-so-setzt-preis-zusammen-440859 https://www.agrarheute.com/tier/rind/78-cent-fuer-trinkmilch... [2] https://bmdv.bund.de/SharedDocs/DE/Anlage/G/MKS-Wissenschaftliche-Untersuchungen/studie-anteil-transportkosten.pdf?__blob=publicationFile https://bmdv.bund.de/SharedDocs/DE/Anlage/G/MKS-Wissenschaft... (Tabelle 8)
• petepete 3y ago
  In the 80s in the UK we had milk delivered every morning in glass bottles by a huge fleet of electric vehicles. The empty bottles were left out, collected by the milkman, sterilised and reused. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk_float https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk_float
  • cjrp 3y ago
    The noise of the electric milk float was oddly haunting. Partly because it was generally still dark outside.
  • darreninthenet 3y ago
    There are still companies doing this, check out Milk and More
    • kolektiv 3y ago
      I just had a look at this (I'd been meaning to for a while, I miss the milkman leaving milk and other bits from my childhood). The milk is literally 4x the price I would pay in the supermarket. It's a lovely idea, but in this economic climate, most people are more price-conscious than that...
      • darreninthenet 3y ago
        Yes it is unfortunately... we used to use them as it supports a local farmer with a proper price for their milk and the delivery guy gets paid a fair amount but when prices shot up we went back to supermarket milk. I'm all for making sure farmers get paid properly instead of ripped off by the supermarkets but when it comes down to it had to count the pennies at home first
      • IanCal 3y ago
        There's often a few middle men with better websites but if you have a more direct option see if you can. The milk we get has a big creamy layer on the top, and tbh it's quite handy just getting a regular delivery of something we have commonly. We often add in some eggs. It's more than the supermarket prices but those are insanely low for the product. I understand many feel the pinch more but if you can, skipping the supermarket can mean more to the actual producers.
• yard2010 3y ago
  The answer is money ofc
• sema4hacker 3y ago
  I was born in the 50's. Growing up, the worst thing about the garbage generated at home was that it had to go into leftover paper bags from the grocery store because plastic garbage bags didn't exist. And those bags went into metal garbage cans outside the house, because plastic garbage cans didn't exist, and those garbage cans were always dented, rusty, and with lids that quickly stopped sealing properly. What a mess.
  • asdff 3y ago
    They still sell the metal cans today but they are at least galvanized.
  • notachatbot123 3y ago
    > What a mess. Nothing compared to https://www.google.com/search?q=landfill+plastic&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=landfill+plastic&tbm=isch
    • trallnag 3y ago
      Plastic trash is supposed to be burned or recycled
      • lupire 3y ago
        Plastic recycling is marketing myth to make you feel better about plastic trash.
      • AlecSchueler 3y ago
        We don't live in a world where what's supposed to happen is what actually happens.
      • piva00 3y ago
        Recycling of plastic is only even possible for a really low percentage of the total produced, it's not a fungible thing since there are seven different grades and each one is incompatible with the other in terms of recycling. Some of those grades are not recyclable at all. Currently we recycle 9% of plastics, sorting through the cheaper grades is non-trivial, we can't recycle our way out of this mess. Burning plastic will just create more pollution, capturing outgassing from burning is also non-trivial. We should instead use less plastic, the 3 Rs start with Reduce, then Re-use and only after that Recycle.
• kostko 3y ago
  Your lifestyle does not generate garbage. Companies that sell non recyclables and non compostsbles generate garbage. Why hasnt cocacola replaced their plastics with something compostable? There are new inventions for replacing plastics out each day, I wonder where those inventions end up.
  • radicaldreamer 3y ago
    Recyclable is a scam perpetuated by the plastic industry. You should be using reusable glass which is expensive to replace but cheap to refill.
    • rightbyte 3y ago
      Where I live only restaurants can buy glass bottle soda. It is quite sad, since I like those. They are way nicer to drink from.
      • vladvasiliu 3y ago
        Where I live, everyone can buy bottled water in glass bottles. I think there are now glass bottles with Coca Cola, too, though I'm not certain (I don't drink soda). The catch is they're obscenely expensive.
        • mavhc 3y ago
          There's free water in the tap
    • AlecSchueler 3y ago
      > a scam perpetuated by the plastic industry What does this actually mean and what are you basing it on? Without any sources or references it reads a bit like FUD.
      • stavros 3y ago
        There have been a few articles about that recently. However, you can notice it for yourself if you notice how many products claim to be "recyclable" but how few are recycled. If recycling were widespread, you'd expect the vast majority of products to be made with recycled plastic.
• asdff 3y ago
  I go through a 64 gallon trash bin a week. By my back of the envelope calculation thats about 1.3 chevy tahoes worth of trash a year, and that's just me one American out of 400 million so all told we are dealing with maybe half a billion chevy tahoes of trash a year we need to do something with or put someplace if most Americans consume like I do.
  • seszett 3y ago
    > I go through a 64 gallon trash bin a week. That seems absurdly large to me. 64 gallons is 250 litres. We're four and we use about one 30 litres (8 gallons) bag for "rest" trash per week (everything not recyclable, including diapers which take a lot of space, so hopefully soon we can at least halve that trash volume) one 30 litres bag for recyclable plastic/metal every two weeks and maybe one 30 litres bag for compostable stuff (mostly just vegetable and fruit peels from cooking) every two weeks or so. That's about 60 litres or 15 gallons per week for a normal-sized family. I can see some of my neighbours having somewhat larger bags, some with smaller bags, but I feel like we are mostly average for our area (in Belgium). In fact, a quick search tells me that Belgians have produced on average 683 kg of trash per year in 2022, which comes to 13 kg per week per person and seems rather consistent with my numbers.
    • brnt 3y ago
      Check your municipal waste centre. Mine, in Limburg (NL), recycles diapers.
      • seszett 3y ago
        Interesting, I wonder how they process them and what they become after recycling. Here in Antwerp diapers are explicitly supposed to be put in the rest[0] though. [0]https://www.antwerpen.be/info/restafval https://www.antwerpen.be/info/restafval
        • brnt 3y ago
          If you search for "luier recycling" you can find out how it's done.
• rusticpenn 3y ago
  In my country growing up, there were always random health issues popping up because the reused packaging or storage without packaging was not always hygienic. In the beginning of 90s, when plastic packaging became popular, it was a huge change as we did not have to worry about many health issues ( food poisoning etc).
• 7734128 3y ago
  Glass is in no way environmentally friendly. It takes a huge amount of energy to produce glass, and a singel glass bottle requires a lot of it. PET bottle recycling is the closest we got to a functional plastic recycling system.
  • ffgjgf1 3y ago
    No micro plastics though which is quite nice.
    • badcppdev 3y ago
      People used to (and still kind of do) worry about glass chipping... ironically we can see that and deal with it. Unlike micro-plastics. Human nature right?
  • formerly_proven 3y ago
    Glass is also very heavy, which means that transporting glass-packaged goods requires much more energy than transporting e.g. plastic bottles.
    • morsch 3y ago
      Though transporting stuff large distances requires a lot of energy either way.
  • thlr 3y ago
    The difference is that glass bottles were consigned and re-used. Also energy use does not tell the whole story and one should consider the impact of plastic that is not recycled or worse, left adrift in the sea or in our rivers. You make a good point and it can be interesting to know how many use of a bottle are required until it becomes more energy-efficient compared to disposable plastic, etc. The shift to the all plastic packaging paradigm was made when companies found out that they could simply let the consumers deal with the packaging once the product was consumed instead of having to get it back from their hands and process it. Hence the modern plastic dystopia.
• globular-toast 3y ago
  The glass bottles of Heinz are available right next to the plastic ones. So in the case of ketchup at least I think people choose the plastic ones.
  • Broken_Hippo 3y ago
    not where I live - Heinz and the major local brand here (Idun, I think?) tend to sell only in plastic bottles. I can sometimes find fancy ketchup in glass bottles, but considering that I only buy ketchup once or twice a year, I just can't remember. The glass bottle available isn't the Mutti ketchup that I bought years ago, so I'm just buying Heinz.
  • vel0city 3y ago
    At many grocery stores I go to, there are no glass bottles of ketchup available. The few that do have them, the glass bottles are significantly smaller than the plastic while also being more expensive. They also don't have the reduced sugar or no HFCS choices in glass bottles. None of the generic brands sell in glass bottles around me. Even then, in the end I'd still end up buying it in plastic. The plastic squeeze bottles are just way more convenient. I'd probably be fine buying it in bulk and fill my own squeeze bottles to reduce plastic consumption, but buying smaller and radically more expensive glass bottles isn't really a winning choice in my book.
• thrdbndndn 3y ago
  > I wonder why this massive change to everything-should-be-packed-in-plastic happened I don't get why people keep pretending plastic being widely used today is due to some conspiracy instead of it's just better at its main function, even without factoring in cost. Compared to glass container, plastic ones are much lighter, harder to break, flexible, malleable, .. the list goes on. In the 1980s, the use of glass containers was more out of necessity than preference. People didn't opt for heavy glass containers to be environmentally friendly; they simply lacked alternatives. The appeal of single-use (plastic) containers lies in their convenience. Although they are undoubtedly more wasteful, their ease of use cannot be denied. People favor them for this convenience, with their wasteful nature being an unfortunate byproduct. If we refuse to acknowledge this fundamental truth, progress in environmentalism will never be done.
  • diggan 3y ago
    > I don't get why people keep pretending plastic being widely used today is due to some conspiracy instead of it's just better at its main function, even without factoring in cost. I don't know how you read parents comment and concluded that they're talking about some conspiracy. They seem to genuinely ask a question that I'm sure they're not the only one thinking about. > In 80's people use more glass containers because they didn't have choices, not because they love to carry heavy glass containers around to help the environment. Again, don't think they said that people used glass containers back then to help the environment, just that for whatever reason they used those containers, it was less harmful to the environment. Not because that was the reason, that was just a side-effect of glass being the only choice. Then they ask the community what the reasons could be for everything being wrapped in plastic now. As it reads right now, your comment doesn't seem to assume good faith of parent comment, but instead you're arguing against some position that isn't even talked about.
    • thrdbndndn 3y ago
      > some position that isn't even talked about. There are already lots of sibling comments saying the heavy use of plastic is "forced on people" by companies, so yes it is talked about. And that's exactly what OP implied. I'm not even saying this point is entirely false, just want to emphasize that people actually prefer convenient things regardless if it's forced on them or not.
• AlecSchueler 3y ago
  Plastic is essentially a byproduct of fuel production. My understand is that a lot of companies will pay others to take that plastic off their hands. Not only is it cheaper to use plastic than glass, it's positively subsidised.
  • pfdietz 3y ago
    Where "fuel" there includes natural gas. If ethane (the feedstock for ethylene production) were not useful for plastics, it would just be left in the natural gas and burned with the methane.
  • wil421 3y ago
    A realtor friend found a lucrative side business in plastic recycling during the Great Recession. She still makes around $100k a year off of it. I wish I knew how it worked but her and her business partner don’t talk about it much. Probably for good reason. Pretty sure they take plastic off people hands and sell it to someone who uses it, paid to take it away and then paid again by a buyer.
    • Scoundreller 3y ago
      Probably exporting it to someone that uses it as fuel, but not labelled/indicated for such use. It’s basically crude oil when it comes to energy/kg. Lots of shipping containers going back empty to lots of places.
• batushka3 3y ago
  Plastic is a superior packaging material. It delivers superb cleanlines and posibility to use packaging gas(Nitrogen) in automated lines. Cleanliness is essential for shelf life, and many products have it now unheard compared to 80s paper packaging - only due to package. Amount of food spoilage prevented by plastic packaging is enormous, it is very sad to see this no plastic hysteria. Like seing dark ages returning.
  • megaman821 3y ago
    I agree with you. Plastic is one of those weird issues where it gets much more prominence than it deserves. Plastic reduces food waste and items damaged in shipping. If you don't litter and have a good landfill system, there is nothing to worry about.
• reactordev 3y ago
  Convenience. In the 80s, people were starting to get over worked and so conveniences like plastic packaging, microwave meals, lunchables, plastic bottles, etc started popping up. Easy, just grab one. When you’re done, just throw it away! Except, then there was a garbage problem - so they campaigned for recycling! Then reality of recycling hit and so they say - separate and clean it first. Meanwhile people like you are wondering how we got to this madness. Convenience. And some really good marketing. Only about 9% of plastic has been recycled.
  • kevin_thibedeau 3y ago
    The Kodak Fling had to be renamed Funsaver because people were taking out the film and throwing away the cameras. That interfered with their plan to refill the used cameras.
• verghese 3y ago
  I remember growing up in India and plastic was introduced to "save the trees". It took us decades for us to fully grasp the environmental devastation it caused.
  • unregistereddev 3y ago
    Growing up in the United States, I remember plastic being introduced for the same reason. For example, there was a huge push to get people to accept plastic shopping bags rather than paper ones. There were news stories talking about how it not only saved trees, but also used less fuel because the paper bags are bulky, heavy, and expensive to ship from the manufacturer.
• infecto 3y ago
  Its cheaper and easier to ensure sanitary products. We love to be romantic about glass but I don't think as easy of a calculation for the total environmental use. Glass is heavier and more expensive to transport. Glass is harder to shape into sizes that make for efficient transportation, for example Costco square milk jugs. I love to use glass when I can but I don't know if using this glass jar which may not even be recycled is better or worse than a plastic container.
  • bayindirh 3y ago
    Glass is recycled infinitely more easily and more widely. Pasabahce sells upcycled and recycled products here, and mark them clearly. Also, we have glass collection bins which has different compartments for clear and colored glass. These are periodically emptied. Even if they are not recycled, a glass jar is used for more than five years in an household, only by replacing the caps in the process. If we don't need the jars, we give them away to people who need them, adding more usable glass to sneakernet of jars. Glass is finicky in some forms, and expensive to make it durable during production and transport, but rarely, if ever, ends up in a trash bin.
    • pxx 3y ago
      It's well-known the total environmental impact is much less for plastic than glass. Just the weight alone should allow you to understand this [0] [1] [2]. Glass is not recyclable widely. It is a contaminant in single-stream recycling because broken glass is a hazard for sorting, and even if you are able to recycle it, the transport costs are extremely high [3]. [0] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230427-glass-or-plastic-which-is-better-for-the-environment https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230427-glass-or-plastic... [1] https://ecochain.com/case-studies/case-study-packaging-plastic-vs-glass/ https://ecochain.com/case-studies/case-study-packaging-plast... [2] https://earth.org/glass-bottles-environmental-impact/ https://earth.org/glass-bottles-environmental-impact/ [3] https://www.wastedive.com/news/when-its-cheaper-to-trash-glass-than-recycle-it/390555/ https://www.wastedive.com/news/when-its-cheaper-to-trash-gla...
      • 3y ago
• mauvehaus 3y ago
  Ale-8-One[0] sold their feature soda/pop/coke/soft drink in some areas in returnable bottles at least as late as 2010. Word was that if their bottle washing and sanitizing machine died, they'd have to stop that. It turns out nobody's making parts for those machines any more. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ale-8-One https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ale-8-One
  • gs17 3y ago
    I know they were still accepting returns back in 2020 (I was looking forwards buying some on a road trip and returning it as we came back through KY), but their new website redesign doesn't seem to mention it anymore. EDIT: The bottles for sale on the website are specifically "non-returnable", not sure if that implies no more returns, or only store-purchased bottles are returnable.
• Fnoord 3y ago
  I remember that as kid, custard in glass bottles. I'd let them fall out of my hands from the fridge and my parents would get angry.
• cubefox 3y ago
  There are concerns that breathing in and ingesting microplastics from clothing, car tires, and packaging is causing some of the health epidemics we see in the last decades. Like rising rates of obesity, cancer, mental disorders (autism, ADHD, gender dysphoria) and decreasing sperm count and quality. But no definitive evidence exists yet. If this turns out to be true, there is a case against plastic even if it is economically superior to the alternatives.
  • lupire 3y ago
    There are "concerns without definitive evidence" that everything causes everything. If this turns out to be true, there is a case against everything.
• adrianmonk 3y ago
  With ketchup (and mustard, mayo, etc.), squeezable bottles are way more convenient. Gone are the days of wanting to get X amount of ketchup out of the bottle but ending up with either 0X or 10X. Aside from the ketchup dispensing utility, you also escape tedious discussions about the best way to get ketchup out of a glass bottle. Do you tap the side? Shake the bottle? Angle it? Smack the bottom? Just sit there patiently? Warm it up? Stick a knife in it? You can be pretty sure that if you use any of these methods, someone is going to tell you about one of the others.
  • natoliniak 3y ago
    > best way to get ketchup out of a glass bottle. i store the ketchup bottle upside down and when i open it, it is immediately ready to pour and is mostly controllable
• specialist 3y ago
  I've mostly switched to pressure cooker, bulk foods (25 lb bags of rice, beans, porridge), and the local produce stand (BYOB). Both my food and packaging waste is now minimal. Most of my plastic waste is from prescriptions. OMG so wasteful. Wax paper bags would be just fine. YMMV.
  • callalex 3y ago
    Remember that these days “waxed” paper is actually PFAS.
    • specialist 3y ago
      Right you are. I did forget. Last time I bought parchment paper, I settled on Costco/Kirkland brand, for that reason. I dimly recall it has a silicon-based coating for non-stick feature. Quick look at the box has no info. I anticipate we'll learn that all this fancy new silicon is toxic as well. FML. I still think paper is preferable to plastic. IIRC, Amazon Rx is using paper now.
• Tangurena2 3y ago
  Glass containers are heavy. Switching to plastic containers was lighter and reduced shipping expenses.
• nonethewiser 3y ago
  > Sometimes I wonder why this massive change to everything-should-be-packed-in-plastic happened Easy - it's way cheaper.
• bastawhiz 3y ago
  In fairness, for ketchup specifically, glass bottles are an incredible nuisance.
  • queuebert 3y ago
    That used to be part of the excitement.
    • bastawhiz 3y ago
      It was always a surprise how ketchupy your food would be! Maybe a little, maybe completely!
• asadotzler 3y ago
  you got scammed by Big Oil. that's what happened.
• fennecbutt 3y ago
  It's cheaper to manufacture and ship = higher executive bonuses and investor dividends.