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How is this not moving more responsability and work onto consumers rather than tackling the problem at the root. Coca-cola had a 2.7B EBTDA last quarter. Marke

How is this not moving more responsability and work onto consumers rather than tackling the problem at the root. Coca-cola had a 2.7B EBTDA last quarter. Marketing needs to stop blowing smoke up people's rears. If they care about the environment, they can just use glass! Install mega watts of renewables to provide the power for glass recycling. Zero plastic in the environment. Companies need to stop externalizing their costs into environmental problems and telling people it's their problem for buying it.

redwall_hp 2y ago
But a glass bottle weighs 10x what a plastic bottle does, resulting in significantly more fuel usage and greenhouse emissions. PET bottles are widely recycled, at something like 90% in Norway and 80% in Japan. Versus 25-30% in the US. The issue in the US is literally that people just throw them in the trash or on the side of the road, outside of the six states that have a deposit. Statista link, with some of the rough figures corroborated by Wikipedia: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1166550/plastic-bottle-recycling-rates-in-select-countries/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1166550/plastic-bottle-r... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PET_bottle_recycling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PET_bottle_recycling The issue is the lack of will, and opposition, to actually put them in a place where the materials can be recycled...and to make it cheaper (through tax incentives) to recycle the material than to use new plastic. Those glass bottles would end up in the trash or in the road too, as things stand. It's where I already see them go most of the time. Moving from a recycling-friendly state to a southern state has been infuriating in that regard.
- DoingIsLearning 2y ago
  > more fuel usage and greenhouse emissions Again coca-cola can make the full logistical operation EV based (bar maritime) and offset with deploying renewables. If they care. Glass can be either washed (even more energy saving) or fully recycled, all the time, 100% of the time. PET : - can only be recyclable a few N cycles and becomes increasingly brittle when recycled. - There is no such thing as transparent recycled PET Those are the two core reasons why none of the major manufacturers actually use recycled PET or use it fractionally (10 to 30% PET, which marketing will spin with 'using (some) plastic from 100% recycled materials') The sad story about the economics of this is that recycled PET is not nearly good quality enough to be used for packaging leading to it being used in plastic poles or road substrates and further contributing to microplastics in the waterways. It's a scam through and through.
0xbadcafebee 2y ago
It's actually a consumer choice thing. Poor countries tend to sell Coke in glass bottles because it's cheaper to run a bottle deposit program and refill them than to sell plastic that just gets thrown away. But consumers don't want glass, it breaks and it's heavy; they want disposable plastic. In fact, for decades consumers have actually bought coke from stores in plastic bags with straws, and collect the bottle deposit at purchase time. (I grew up drinking coke from plastic bags) People need to start taking responsibility for their complicity in the world's problems, rather than blaming everyone but themselves and demanding someone else fix all their problems and pay for it too.
- wakawaka28 2y ago
  Plastic bags make sense when people are carrying all their groceries on foot from the store to their homes. If the same people had to put their groceries in a car to be jostled about, I bet they wouldn't like their liquids in bags that can leak and leave a mess in their expensive cars. I think a lot of people like glass, but I haven't seen a recycler want it in a long time. So is it more responsible to buy glass that you know is going in the trash, or plastic that might be recycled? It's not obvious.
  - DoingIsLearning 2y ago
    > but I haven't seen a recycler want it Perhaps that is a US problem, in Europe glass recycling is fairly Universal at all recycling centres and most neighbourhood streets have below ground waste containers for glass. At least in my reality the issue is that Retailers have virtually eliminated glass alternatives from supermarket shelves. Other than beer/wine and some 1.5L juice bottles, pretty much everything else is plastic, even when the same product is also manufactured in glass, it simply does not exist in supermarket shelves. You have to go to very large distribution centres to actual find glass alternatives for everyday products. So to me turning this into a consumer issue is naive.
    - wakawaka28 2y ago
      Glass beverage bottles are unpopular in the US too, but at least in places I've lived the recyclers don't want glass anymore. I think the only commercial glass recycling that is energy-efficient (that is, competitive with using plastic) is bottle washing. If you buy beer, wine, or anything else in glass here, which is not exactly rare, you usually have to just throw the bottles away. I would be interested to know if your country subsidizes the glass recycling or if it is legally mandated. I'm also curious about relevant regulations in the US too. It might be the case that we require a level of sterilization for bottles that is more strict than other countries, that makes it uneconomical to recycle. There are so many possible factors. Recycling is a very low-profit industry and it is often operated at a loss. In some cases the recyclers throw away almost everything, keeping only certain easily separable stuff like aluminum cans and clean cardboard.
wakawaka28 2y ago
>they can just use glass Does anyone even recycle glass anymore? I know it used to be a thing but I think fresh plastic bottles probably cost less than even the collection and sorting costs for glass. I haven't seen any recycler ask for glass in ages. >Companies need to stop externalizing their costs into environmental problems and telling people it's their problem for buying it. They are just giving people what they want at a price they can pay. If you really want to minimize waste, the way to go is probably for people to make their own soda at home using flavor extracts. It's easy and probably less polluting to do this than anything else. But when you're not at home, you have to have drinks ready-made.
- charrondev 2y ago
  My local transfer station has a large glass deposit the same size as its plastic one. In Quebec you bring your glass bottles back for their deposit and at least for the beer bottles they are cleaned and reused many times.
  - wakawaka28 2y ago
    I'm going to have to do more research. I can just say, I haven't seen glass welcome in recycle bins in a long time. It makes me wonder what changed, which types of recycling are subsidized, etc. Many bottles in the US still say they are subject to a deposit of like 5 cents, but only in certain states. I've never lived anywhere that had an active bottle return program for glass.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
SoftTalker 2y ago
Refillable bottles and plastic are not incompatible. The bottles just need to be durable enough. They will still be lighter than glass which will save fuel used for transporting them.
dialup_sounds 2y ago
I think that the combination of carbon emissions and physical waste from reusing a plastic bottle 25 times and then recycling it are still likely to be lower than producing a glass bottle and hoping it gets recycled.

redwall_hp 2y ago

But a glass bottle weighs 10x what a plastic bottle does, resulting in significantly more fuel usage and greenhouse emissions. PET bottles are widely recycled, at something like 90% in Norway and 80% in Japan. Versus 25-30% in the US. The issue in the US is literally that people just throw them in the trash or on the side of the road, outside of the six states that have a deposit. Statista link, with some of the rough figures corroborated by Wikipedia: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1166550/plastic-bottle-recycling-rates-in-select-countries/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1166550/plastic-bottle-r... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PET_bottle_recycling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PET_bottle_recycling The issue is the lack of will, and opposition, to actually put them in a place where the materials can be recycled...and to make it cheaper (through tax incentives) to recycle the material than to use new plastic. Those glass bottles would end up in the trash or in the road too, as things stand. It's where I already see them go most of the time. Moving from a recycling-friendly state to a southern state has been infuriating in that regard.

DoingIsLearning 2y ago
> more fuel usage and greenhouse emissions Again coca-cola can make the full logistical operation EV based (bar maritime) and offset with deploying renewables. If they care. Glass can be either washed (even more energy saving) or fully recycled, all the time, 100% of the time. PET : - can only be recyclable a few N cycles and becomes increasingly brittle when recycled. - There is no such thing as transparent recycled PET Those are the two core reasons why none of the major manufacturers actually use recycled PET or use it fractionally (10 to 30% PET, which marketing will spin with 'using (some) plastic from 100% recycled materials') The sad story about the economics of this is that recycled PET is not nearly good quality enough to be used for packaging leading to it being used in plastic poles or road substrates and further contributing to microplastics in the waterways. It's a scam through and through.

0xbadcafebee 2y ago

It's actually a consumer choice thing. Poor countries tend to sell Coke in glass bottles because it's cheaper to run a bottle deposit program and refill them than to sell plastic that just gets thrown away. But consumers don't want glass, it breaks and it's heavy; they want disposable plastic. In fact, for decades consumers have actually bought coke from stores in plastic bags with straws, and collect the bottle deposit at purchase time. (I grew up drinking coke from plastic bags) People need to start taking responsibility for their complicity in the world's problems, rather than blaming everyone but themselves and demanding someone else fix all their problems and pay for it too.

wakawaka28 2y ago
Plastic bags make sense when people are carrying all their groceries on foot from the store to their homes. If the same people had to put their groceries in a car to be jostled about, I bet they wouldn't like their liquids in bags that can leak and leave a mess in their expensive cars. I think a lot of people like glass, but I haven't seen a recycler want it in a long time. So is it more responsible to buy glass that you know is going in the trash, or plastic that might be recycled? It's not obvious.
- DoingIsLearning 2y ago
  > but I haven't seen a recycler want it Perhaps that is a US problem, in Europe glass recycling is fairly Universal at all recycling centres and most neighbourhood streets have below ground waste containers for glass. At least in my reality the issue is that Retailers have virtually eliminated glass alternatives from supermarket shelves. Other than beer/wine and some 1.5L juice bottles, pretty much everything else is plastic, even when the same product is also manufactured in glass, it simply does not exist in supermarket shelves. You have to go to very large distribution centres to actual find glass alternatives for everyday products. So to me turning this into a consumer issue is naive.
  - wakawaka28 2y ago
    Glass beverage bottles are unpopular in the US too, but at least in places I've lived the recyclers don't want glass anymore. I think the only commercial glass recycling that is energy-efficient (that is, competitive with using plastic) is bottle washing. If you buy beer, wine, or anything else in glass here, which is not exactly rare, you usually have to just throw the bottles away. I would be interested to know if your country subsidizes the glass recycling or if it is legally mandated. I'm also curious about relevant regulations in the US too. It might be the case that we require a level of sterilization for bottles that is more strict than other countries, that makes it uneconomical to recycle. There are so many possible factors. Recycling is a very low-profit industry and it is often operated at a loss. In some cases the recyclers throw away almost everything, keeping only certain easily separable stuff like aluminum cans and clean cardboard.

wakawaka28 2y ago

>they can just use glass Does anyone even recycle glass anymore? I know it used to be a thing but I think fresh plastic bottles probably cost less than even the collection and sorting costs for glass. I haven't seen any recycler ask for glass in ages. >Companies need to stop externalizing their costs into environmental problems and telling people it's their problem for buying it. They are just giving people what they want at a price they can pay. If you really want to minimize waste, the way to go is probably for people to make their own soda at home using flavor extracts. It's easy and probably less polluting to do this than anything else. But when you're not at home, you have to have drinks ready-made.

charrondev 2y ago
My local transfer station has a large glass deposit the same size as its plastic one. In Quebec you bring your glass bottles back for their deposit and at least for the beer bottles they are cleaned and reused many times.
- wakawaka28 2y ago
  I'm going to have to do more research. I can just say, I haven't seen glass welcome in recycle bins in a long time. It makes me wonder what changed, which types of recycling are subsidized, etc. Many bottles in the US still say they are subject to a deposit of like 5 cents, but only in certain states. I've never lived anywhere that had an active bottle return program for glass.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

SoftTalker 2y ago

Refillable bottles and plastic are not incompatible. The bottles just need to be durable enough. They will still be lighter than glass which will save fuel used for transporting them.

dialup_sounds 2y ago

I think that the combination of carbon emissions and physical waste from reusing a plastic bottle 25 times and then recycling it are still likely to be lower than producing a glass bottle and hoping it gets recycled.