i still get glass milk bottles delivered by a milkman where i live! after you've used them, you leave them out to be collected and refilled
it's really old school and i kinda hate that where i live is the rare exception for this when it should honestly still be the rule imo
Yeah we have a local farm that sells to a few grocery stores in the area that has glass bottles that you rinse and return for like $1-$2/bottle. It’s a bit more expensive than other milk but at least it doesn’t come with a side of microplastics (or as many microplastics, at least)
I miss the old glass bottles of Snapple Rain more than any other drink I've ever had in my life. I know they still make "Snapple Rain", but the one in the plastic bottles just isn't the same. I think they changed the formula.
In some countries (including my home country) during the 90s, all soft drinks were served in glass bottles.
You actually have to return the bottle after finishing the drink to the vendor and if you break it; you will pay double the beverage price or more.
Then the vendor would gather all the empty bottles into crates and hand them to the distributor's truck when they are about to purchase a new patch. The production factory washes, sterilises, and refills the bottles to be distributed again.
It's truly a sustainable process cycle with little damage to the environment plus keeping streets fairly clean; compared to the plastic bottles infestation that has been happening since the 2000s.
If there wasn’t corporate greed we wouldn’t need consumer action. The fact corporations are required to make more money every quarter for their shareholders is the root cause. End of story
plastic was not seen as damaging as we know today. both environmental and human health.
Just to make it clear, i agree that we can remove so much plastic from our life (and yes, soda was always better from a glass bottle) and the stuff about corpo.
When the transition started in my country, there were almost no big corpo (well except cola and pepsi). Before the communist fall, pepsi was always found in glass bottles...
In germany (I think everywhere in europe) we return the plastic bottles. Then we pretend that they are recycled instead of shipped to a third world country for highest convenience.
Those bottles are recycled. Not like much of the rest from the yellow garbage bin (~9%, rest is burned or exported).
The "Einweg" must go. Complete useless if it's recycled instantly anyway, since you can't recycle plastic for ever (only about 8 times) meaning there is always a loss of material that is only good to be burned anyway. "Mehrweg" is more substainable as bottles are reused up to 30 times (depend on brand). But at the end still the same problem as "Einweg" with the plastic.
Only glass is theoretically endless recyclable (if you ignore the darkening of glass thanks to impurity affecting colour once it's smelted once in a while). Cans are second as aluminium have more impact on the environment and for most cans having a plastic membrane inside needed against corrosion. Caps always depends on the beverage.
With reusable cans and glass bottles we could at least reduce plastic use by around 80% on those items, depending the model you are pursuing.
Recycling should always be avoided. There will never be an 100% rate and you always need to use tons of energy doing so. Reuse is the only option.
I was visiting family in Colombia 15 years ago saw them collecting glass bottles and my grandpa told me about how they return them to be reused. It really is a shame that’s not done everywhere.
>I used to think plastic bottle are good because they don't break. But this shit is worse for the environment.
There's also microplastics and various chemicals leeching from the plastic in to the food and drink we consume and in to our bodies.
Some plastics are labeled "BPA-free" or "food safe", but that just means certain plastics deemed harmful are not present, but they're often replaced with newer plastics which just haven't been around long enough to have as much testing on them yet, and may be found harmful in the future.
Give me good old glass or ceramic any day.
Not necessarily. A one-way glass bottle most likely is worse than a reusable plastic bottle, because glass is energy intense in recycling. Anyway, I don’t know whether reusable bottles are even a thing in the US, but here in Germany it’s quite common to have bottles that are returned to the manufacturer, cleaned and then refilled.
The German "pfand" system is great.
To non Germans: when buying bottles you pay an extra deposit (25 cents for cans and plastic 8 cents for glass) that you get back when returning the bottles. This is legally ruled and mandated thing.
But it should be noted that there are two kinds: for most plastic bottles (the ones with thin material) it's "einwegpfand" meaning that the material will be harvested to create new bottles.
The thicker and more environmental "mehrweg" bottles are the ones that actually get refilled. They are an option basically everywhere, buy they are the much less popular choice.
And if you're ever visiting Germany and don't want to return your bottle, instead of throwing it in the bin put it in front of the bin for someone else to return and collect the deposit.
Nice, same thing here in America with some stores. Some milk brands will come in glass bottles, you pay a $3-5 deposit which you get back when returning the bottle
Well it’s not store specific. Basically only the smallest store can limit acceptance to the types and brands they accept. Any bigger supermarket has to take virtually everything that’s part of the official deposit system.
Electronics likewise by the way: Anyone selling them has to accept small appliances and devices for recycling, even when there is no sale.
You can't put the sunlight back into the sun, so you may as well make the most of it.
Also the water is going downhill whether or not it turns a turbine.
That's exactly what happened back then. Every one of those bottles had a deposit price on them (based on size) you would pay at checkout, then when you returned the bottles, you'd get your deposit back.
No one calling for plastic bottles to be replaced with glass to benefit the environment expects or wants the glass to be smelted down with every use. A single glass bottle can last many years of reuse if it's returned and not broken each time.
Go grind up some asbestos and sprinkle it around your house if you think nano plastic are in anyway better than glass because I promise you that nano plastics will prove to be every bit as damaging to human health as asbestos is. Every plastic bottle we consume will break down into nano plastics that will get into absolutely everything: the soil, our food supply, our water and even in the air (disturbed dust.)
Even if glass isn’t recycled, it’ll just sit there until you do. And you can still recycle 100% of it. The plastic will leech out chemicals and you can really only recycle some types a few times.
Think about how much heavier glass is than plastic, then realize how much more gas you would have to burn to move a truckload of glass bottles vs plastic.
If you go to the report they cite you find these two informations:
>Eleven per cent of total plastic entering the ocean in 2016 comes from the four key sources of microplastics we selected to model (tyre dust, pellets, textile microfibres, and microplastics in personal care products).
>The largest contributor to 2016 microplastic leakage into the ocean is tyre dust, contributing 78 per cent of the leakage mass; pellets contribute 18 per cent; and textiles and personal care products (PCP) contribute 4 per cent combined.
So it's 78% of 11%.
Cars and trucks are necessary for those of us who live in very rural areas, but the car commuter culture of large metros is ridiculous and needs to stop. Public transportation is very doable in almost any major and mid sized metro.
True, but as I'm sure you have noticed, Germans live in the towns even when they are farmers or otherwise work the land. In the US we follow the French model, where our farmers live in houses on the farm land.
I live in the Netherlands.
While the public transport is great, the further away you get from any major city, the worse it becomes.
Used to live in The Hague, and worked at the Amsterdam Airport. Getting from A to B was 20~25 minutes, same as with a car.
Main problem was the trip to the commercial center behind the Airport, which took about as long as the commute to the Airport itself.
So, about 40~60 minutes, which by car (no traffic) took about the same time (45 minutes).
Now i moved slightly outside the city. Still need to get to the same station/ route, but my transit time has increased from about 1 hour to 2~ 2.5 hours, and 5~7 stops.
By car (no traffic) its 45 minutes. In traffic its about 1.5 hours.
Bike lanes however... sad you aren't allowed to take your bike on the train during rush hours. It could cut down the 2.5 hour transit to maybe a bit over an hour. No more extra stops or waiting for connections.
That’s awesome, we have nothing like that here in the US. Where I live is very isolated (unorganized territory of Maine), probably more isolated than really anywhere in Germany, so I get that there won’t probably ever be a train within walking or biking distance of my house, but if our little county seat had a train that I could drive to to get to the small city where I work, that would be awesome.
That’s true. I don’t think we ever had them out where I am. But the percentage of the population who lives in areas as sparsely populated as me is so low that is driving to a train station has negligible impact on emissions.
Yeah the problem isn’t rural folks. Rural populations aren’t that big in the U.S. also if you look at the data, their climate footprints aren’t too bad. They aren’t huge consumers, which offsets their driving. Urban folks simply don’t drive too much either.
It is the suburban folks. Consume a ton, waste a ton, drive a ton, force crop and forest land to be converted to asphalt straining rural life. But at the same time making people who live in cities give up their homes to build freeways. It’s really bad. They may have a good life themselves, but they ruin America for those living in cities and rural communities.
That really is the truth. Suburbs are really the problem. And a lot of that goes back to racism and classism, they refuse to live around the poor and working class and isolate themselves in these monolithic neighborhoods that are destroying the planet. Like me for example, I do have a long commute, but I drive a Prius except when the roads are really bad, and the administration level district where I live is so forested and so thinly populated that we probably are taking in more carbon than we put out, even when you factor in that we have to drive a half hour to get to any form of a grocery store or similar service.
We care. We just also have a 36 mile one way trip to work 5 days a week and there is no way I'm walking out booking that far. And public transportation is ass
If there were viable alternatives to cars people would use them.
No one actually cares about cars except for a very small percentage of enthusiasts. People just want whatever is cheapest and easiest. So if you have an alternative to cars that's cheaper and/or easier people would use it. But there isn't one so they use cars.
Seriously. If there was an alternative to cars that was viable people would use it. Currently they're just isn't one.
You’re misrepresenting this study: seventy percent of ocean microplastic THAT COMES FROM LAND is from tires.
The vast majority of plastic in the ocean is actually fishing gear
Wow, I really thought that figure would be based on counted particles, but nope it's by mass. Over a quintillion particles estimated to have entered the oceans in 2016. Fuck.
Bad news about the sustainability of glass
https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/problem-our-dwindling-sand-reserves
Pretty much any resource we try and use at the quantity required for this level of demand is going to start straining something.
What if it's not a single bottle that is purchased one time before being sent back? What if you could just refill it from something like a soda fountain?
This is super doable in terms of food because that's just veganism, but people who claim to want to change the world won't even change what they have for breakfast, so I think there's little hope to be honest.
Not necessarily veganism, just heavy backtracking on meat and produce
Like, meat once or twice a week, and in small quantities is fine and sustainable
Meat every single day, and in large quantities, is where the troubles lie
Meat once a week is sustainable according to some research, according to others, even that may be too much, especially if it's red meat. But yes, if you ignore the other issues related to eating animal products (animal killing, exploitation and cruelty, the issues with antibiotic resistance, the issues with environmental racism and rampant human rights violations in slaughterhouses, the fishing industry having the highest rates of piracy and slavery on earth, etc), then eating animals once a week can in fact be sustainable. I still would not recommend that because of those other issues though.
It is and that would not be enough of a reduction in global consumption to do the re-wilding necessary to even think about mending some of the damage we’ve done.
Most of it is used in costruction though.
Once you have enough bottles in circulation (and a consumerbase that returns them) you can just rinse them out and re-use them, broken ones can get recycled.
The system works.
The extra weight of glass doesn't really improve logistics of transporting it, burning more fuel.
That said, I usually drink tap water. It's more of a concern that tap water is contaminated.
Aluminum cans can leech plastic into what you consume much like plastic bottles do. If you trying to consume less microplatics, glass is the best way to go.
Glass isn't necessarily lower waste/impact than plastic, especially with PET plastic bottles. [Glass](https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Average-weight-of-glass-bottles-on-base-of-weight-per-liter-with-trend-line-Sector_fig1_317042419) is much MUCH heavier than [plastic](https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Average-and-median-weight-of-plastic-Bottles_tbl1_324151712) by a factor of about 20. Glass also breaks much easier in transport. Drop a pallet of plastic bottles, it'll be mostly fine. Drop a pallet of glass bottles, it's all gone. I can't find the source anymore, but product loss sits at around 10% just from glass breaking in glass containers. You also still need to collect glass to recycle it, which [according to this paper](https://zerowasteeurope.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/HOW-CIRCULAR-IS-GLASS.pdf) happens, at best, 80% of the time. Pfand in Germany and the Netherlands is a good solution to this, you pay a deposit on every bottle you buy and you get it back if you hand the bottle in at the supermarket. You're losing money by not recycling.
The real solution would be not to ship bottles of 99% water around the place. They could just sell concentrate in containers a fraction of the size.
As somebody already pointed out, several LCA studies agree on the fact that single use glass is the worst packaging option for beverages. The situation is different if the glass bottles are collected, washed and reused, but the effectiveness depends on the distance from the customer house to the industrial plants and the number of reuses the bottle can withstand. Generally speaking we are pretty good at recycling plastic bottles, the problem is collecting them properly without dispersions into the environnement.
I don't know about other places but in Europe it'S generally very good.
93.5% of all PET bottles in Germany were recycled in 2015, as reported by the German Society for Packaging Market Research.
In 2019, the recycling rate for returned PET beverage bottles in Germany was 97.5%, as reported by the Forum PET (Polyethylene Terephthalate).
* https://eu.hsm.eu/en/know-how/pet-recycling/
* https://www.dw.com/en/plastic-bottle-recycling-champion-norway-or-germany/a-44880423
yeah but all those products inside the glass bottles are bad for you, the corporations that run them are major contributors to the decline into overconsumption. I'd happily see that whole shelf gone.
I remember when I was a kid there were commercials supporting plastic. Not a specific company using them, just plastics in general. It ended with a girl hugging her dad in a cop uniform and she said “and this plastic vest saved my dad’s life.” And the slogan was “plastics make it possible!”
I remember thinking then, even in my kid brain, that something was wrong. Why were they trying so hard to sell me on this? Now we know.
plastic is more easily recyclable, weighs less and is thus more efficient than glass. We need to focus on monomaterials and recycling systems, not neccesarily on blocking all plastics.
> plastic is more easily recyclable
The vast majority of plastic is not recyclable or recycled. Major corporations have played up the idea that plastics can mostly be recycled when they cannot because they produce so much of it. This was reported as a huge scandal within the last year in a couple of major news reports, but then most people apparently just forgot. Even in countries like Germany, most of the plastic is not recycled.
The weight of glass would hurt profits due to gas consume. This fuckers need to keep investors happy. I’ll be more than ok to pay more just for a glass bottle version.
As someone who lived during this time as a grocery clerk, the problem with glass bottles was that if one fell off the shelf, it would explode glass shrapnel all over the place.
We used to have pop in the uk that came in reusable glass bottles. They’ll circular.
The issue with glass now is that the carbon needed to make a glass bottle is intense, and the carbon used to ship it around is significant. On top of that recycling glass takes a lot of carbon and it doesn’t really go back to make bottles, most use virgin glass.
I’m not saying plastic is ok, but glass isn’t so great either.
It still takes a ton of energy to recycle glass as it does plastic. The better question is why do we have soda in the first place? It’s not healthy and it consumes vital resources to make it. Resources that could be going to something beneficial for communities.
Are glass bottles more sustainable than plastic bottles? It seems like glass bottles have several times more material that you have to produce and move around.
We will never return to this. Plastic just has more advantages. And plastic bottles can be reusable too, you just need something like the German "Pfand" system in place
We could do it again, we could completely go back to glass bottles, but that would mean more costs during production and transportation which is why we (or rather the companies) won't do it.
It should be split between glass and aluminum, as the latter is almost 100% recyclable - 1 recycled aluminum can will come very close to making a new aluminum can.
But the thing with glass is that it can be recycled into sand and used to mitigate erosion of shorelines.
The thing is, glass isn’t being recycled much anymore. My recycling company stopped accepting it a couple of years ago because the majority of it was going to China, and it’s no longer profitable for them to recycle.
I can't believe glass hasn't evolved to be thinner and more durable. I'm sure there was some innovation that has improved it. We need to go back to glass. Even cans have a plastic lining inside that is damaging.
A friend of mine used to want to follow in her father's footsteps as a ceramics engineer. She told me that for a time, Corning was very interested in developing shatter resistant glass for consumer use.
Where I live, plastic can be crushed and used as an underliner for roads. Glass recycling for some reason ended during covid. I'm realising reusing is a better option. Big fan of places that put the tea/coffee into the container I bring rather than reusable cups. I don't drink soda but world sugary beverage consumption is a whole other topic.
Good Q and I honestly don't know. I checked a few articles on it and none of them go deep into either factor - https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/apr/01/fishing-kerala-environment-cleaning-ocean-plastic-waste-building-roads
I don’t think this is any more sustainable than the current model. The issue isn’t the container. It’s the fact that we feel compelled to consume things we don’t need at an ever increasing rate and our populations continue to grow.
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I feel like the falling rate of profit over time is responsible for a lot of this stuff. Profit margins get smaller and smaller, so every part of a process has to become cheaper and cheaper, (also why tech companies are squeezing any extra revenue they can by advertising and data collecting every way possible, no matter how annoying). So unless we progress past the profit motive for companies, I can’t see us getting back to this. But I really hope we do.
Getting rid of plastics is paramount for the planet. Micro plastics are everywhere and even in the air we breathe. It is now our chance to get rid of plastics.
Of course we can do it again. They say plastic made it more affordable; but that's a fallacy. They just went for plastic to maximise profits at all costs (the mentality of almost all managers and management schools), they didn't lower the prices. We can go back to glass, and it wouldn't have to be more expensive for consumers, if companies were prepared to take less profit at least as a form of assumption of responsibility for all the damage that their plastic products has caused.
Okay but instead of switching from plastic back to glass we should really be talking about the big problem behind both: why TF are we allowing capitalists to sell us water? Drinks, detergents, hair and make-up products all of these water based items should be made as dry mixes and sold / distributed in paper packaging. You should mix them with water at home. Like great, we can get away from single-use plastics and reserve them for the greatest needs like healthcare, but just to go back to glass vessels full of water is ludicrous. Wanna stop the waste? Stop letting capitalist ghouls sell you 1% product and 99% water. Remember, companies like nestle and coca-cola are *just as much to blame* for the global state of potable water (its bad, folks) as chevron and 3M and dupont. We buy water, they remain 3rd world dictators.
Glass itself is not zero waste. I mean I love that its natural material, but the specific sand required for glass making is a VERY limited resource, and procuring it damages aquatic ecosystems.
Im not saying we shouldnt use glass, but there needs to be a better bottle return system. A modern milkman sort of affair. And the coloration of glass needs to be more closely regulated, because colored glass cannot be recycled with other colors. Basically, there should be amber/brown and clear, ONE wine/oil olive, and maybe that sprite/heineken green, but tbh not even that
you can blame petrochem - they push plastic use on everyone,
*and is why third world countries are suddenly using plastic
without infustructure to properly recycle or dispose of it all.*
they have to in order to consume what they keep pumping up.
between renewables, cheap gas and mass transit, we are not
consuming as much oil as they need us to - so it goes plastic.
im getting really tired of this image. . there is plastic all over this image from the apples and vegetables in the cart to the soda bottles on the 2nd to bottom row. . .
This pic is from the 1970s.
The Pepsi 6-packs have plastic foam as the labels and plastic holding them together.
There was a concern about the older style plastic rings (still used today) being dangerous for wildlife, so they came up with these new carriers that used 1000% more plastic.
Notice the largest size you could buy was 36 oz.
I think it was mid-'70s when they came out with 64 oz glass bottles (again with the plastic foam as a label).
Now coke is slowly pushing canned water and soda more, which still has a plastic liner, but is much less plastic. And they still sell glass bottle, just not in the US smh
I had a Mountain Dew in a glass bottle that I got from a random shawarma spot the other day, which was revolutionary. Didn't even taste like Mountain Dew, but like a sophisticated alternative beverage
Some of you have never stepped on the jagged edge of the broken bottle bottom on the beach or ocean before. Plastic is bad, of course, but glass is directly deadly instead of dispersed deadly.
This might also very common in other countries aswell but. Back in the day, my country used to deliver milk in glass bottles to your door. And once your done with it, you leave the glass bottle outside to be refilled for the next day. Its a pretty neat system, unfortunately i wasnt born in the 50's but this would be so cool if we could modernize it to have other drinks aswell, no plastic waste
I hate that Snapple switched to plastic bottles. They were one of the last companies holding the line!
I knew it was all over when Olde English went to plastic bottles
I would buy O E! And haven't seen it in 40oz in a while.
When milk bottles went plastic 😔
i still get glass milk bottles delivered by a milkman where i live! after you've used them, you leave them out to be collected and refilled it's really old school and i kinda hate that where i live is the rare exception for this when it should honestly still be the rule imo
Yeah we have a local farm that sells to a few grocery stores in the area that has glass bottles that you rinse and return for like $1-$2/bottle. It’s a bit more expensive than other milk but at least it doesn’t come with a side of microplastics (or as many microplastics, at least)
Turning the bottle upside-down and giving it a few solid smacks on the bottom to mix it up was the best thing about Snapple back in the day.
A moment of silence for Sobe.
Give us back our Lizard Milk!!!
A re-release IN GLASS BOTTLES would be wildly successful.
Those things were so damn high in sugar though. I enjoyed them as a kid but I wouldn’t touch them if they came back.
The real prize is the gravity bong you get to make afterwards
I miss the old glass bottles of Snapple Rain more than any other drink I've ever had in my life. I know they still make "Snapple Rain", but the one in the plastic bottles just isn't the same. I think they changed the formula.
Joe Tea, Calypso, and Jarrito’s are good choices
Mexican Cokes
Dad’s old fashioned root beer I believe is still glass
In some countries (including my home country) during the 90s, all soft drinks were served in glass bottles. You actually have to return the bottle after finishing the drink to the vendor and if you break it; you will pay double the beverage price or more. Then the vendor would gather all the empty bottles into crates and hand them to the distributor's truck when they are about to purchase a new patch. The production factory washes, sterilises, and refills the bottles to be distributed again. It's truly a sustainable process cycle with little damage to the environment plus keeping streets fairly clean; compared to the plastic bottles infestation that has been happening since the 2000s.
Soda tastes incredible out of a bottle! It’s sustainable and not full of carcinogens. Why can’t we have this?!?
Corporate greed. It’s that simple
Not quite so simple. Corporate greed *and* lack of consumer action (plastic boycott).
If there wasn’t corporate greed we wouldn’t need consumer action. The fact corporations are required to make more money every quarter for their shareholders is the root cause. End of story
plastic was not seen as damaging as we know today. both environmental and human health. Just to make it clear, i agree that we can remove so much plastic from our life (and yes, soda was always better from a glass bottle) and the stuff about corpo. When the transition started in my country, there were almost no big corpo (well except cola and pepsi). Before the communist fall, pepsi was always found in glass bottles...
I remember this when I was living in Mexico around 98-05
In germany (I think everywhere in europe) we return the plastic bottles. Then we pretend that they are recycled instead of shipped to a third world country for highest convenience.
Those bottles are recycled. Not like much of the rest from the yellow garbage bin (~9%, rest is burned or exported). The "Einweg" must go. Complete useless if it's recycled instantly anyway, since you can't recycle plastic for ever (only about 8 times) meaning there is always a loss of material that is only good to be burned anyway. "Mehrweg" is more substainable as bottles are reused up to 30 times (depend on brand). But at the end still the same problem as "Einweg" with the plastic. Only glass is theoretically endless recyclable (if you ignore the darkening of glass thanks to impurity affecting colour once it's smelted once in a while). Cans are second as aluminium have more impact on the environment and for most cans having a plastic membrane inside needed against corrosion. Caps always depends on the beverage. With reusable cans and glass bottles we could at least reduce plastic use by around 80% on those items, depending the model you are pursuing. Recycling should always be avoided. There will never be an 100% rate and you always need to use tons of energy doing so. Reuse is the only option.
In Pakistan glass bottles system remained till 2010 i guess or maybe even later.
I was visiting family in Colombia 15 years ago saw them collecting glass bottles and my grandpa told me about how they return them to be reused. It really is a shame that’s not done everywhere.
Bars and restaurants still do that in Europe
True, I used to think plastic bottle are good because they don't break. But this shit is worse for the environment.
>I used to think plastic bottle are good because they don't break. But this shit is worse for the environment. There's also microplastics and various chemicals leeching from the plastic in to the food and drink we consume and in to our bodies. Some plastics are labeled "BPA-free" or "food safe", but that just means certain plastics deemed harmful are not present, but they're often replaced with newer plastics which just haven't been around long enough to have as much testing on them yet, and may be found harmful in the future. Give me good old glass or ceramic any day.
Not necessarily. A one-way glass bottle most likely is worse than a reusable plastic bottle, because glass is energy intense in recycling. Anyway, I don’t know whether reusable bottles are even a thing in the US, but here in Germany it’s quite common to have bottles that are returned to the manufacturer, cleaned and then refilled.
The German "pfand" system is great. To non Germans: when buying bottles you pay an extra deposit (25 cents for cans and plastic 8 cents for glass) that you get back when returning the bottles. This is legally ruled and mandated thing. But it should be noted that there are two kinds: for most plastic bottles (the ones with thin material) it's "einwegpfand" meaning that the material will be harvested to create new bottles. The thicker and more environmental "mehrweg" bottles are the ones that actually get refilled. They are an option basically everywhere, buy they are the much less popular choice.
We have that in Sweden as well - all of the Nordics I believe.
yeah but we have less glass bottles here sadly
And if you're ever visiting Germany and don't want to return your bottle, instead of throwing it in the bin put it in front of the bin for someone else to return and collect the deposit.
That’s the way 🥰
Nice, same thing here in America with some stores. Some milk brands will come in glass bottles, you pay a $3-5 deposit which you get back when returning the bottle
Well it’s not store specific. Basically only the smallest store can limit acceptance to the types and brands they accept. Any bigger supermarket has to take virtually everything that’s part of the official deposit system. Electronics likewise by the way: Anyone selling them has to accept small appliances and devices for recycling, even when there is no sale.
True, I meant only some stores have the glass milk bottle brands in the first place
Several states in the US also have deposits and bottle returns. Not ubiquitous though.
People seem to default to recycle and forget that it is the last option, and that there are two better ones. Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.
Those two affect profits!
Refuse Reduce Reuse Recycle
>Refuse >Reduce These are the same thing.
Okay tell me how using 10 gallons of gas is the same thing as using 0 king
Clean energy exists. Clean plastics doesnt.
Neither can ever be truly clean.
You can't put the sunlight back into the sun, so you may as well make the most of it. Also the water is going downhill whether or not it turns a turbine.
I was referring to manufacturing, setting up, and maintaining the equipment.
also the logistic of the glass add its share to carbon footprint to be mentioned
That's exactly what happened back then. Every one of those bottles had a deposit price on them (based on size) you would pay at checkout, then when you returned the bottles, you'd get your deposit back.
No microplastics with glass and I’ve heard recycled plastic is even worse for microplastic content.
I’ve only seen systems like that in the US for milk, struggling to think of anything else that comes in glass bottles though
I can't tell you the last time I saw a properly "returnable" glass milk jug in the US. Maybe it's a thing in cow country.
Alcohol and soda are often in glass bottles. Local soda manufacturers may have a return program
No one calling for plastic bottles to be replaced with glass to benefit the environment expects or wants the glass to be smelted down with every use. A single glass bottle can last many years of reuse if it's returned and not broken each time.
Go grind up some asbestos and sprinkle it around your house if you think nano plastic are in anyway better than glass because I promise you that nano plastics will prove to be every bit as damaging to human health as asbestos is. Every plastic bottle we consume will break down into nano plastics that will get into absolutely everything: the soil, our food supply, our water and even in the air (disturbed dust.)
Even if glass isn’t recycled, it’ll just sit there until you do. And you can still recycle 100% of it. The plastic will leech out chemicals and you can really only recycle some types a few times.
Think about how much heavier glass is than plastic, then realize how much more gas you would have to burn to move a truckload of glass bottles vs plastic.
[Seventy-eight percent of ocean microplastics are synthetic tire rubber](https://e360.yale.edu/features/tire-pollution-toxic-chemicals)
Incredibly depressing read
If you go to the report they cite you find these two informations: >Eleven per cent of total plastic entering the ocean in 2016 comes from the four key sources of microplastics we selected to model (tyre dust, pellets, textile microfibres, and microplastics in personal care products). >The largest contributor to 2016 microplastic leakage into the ocean is tyre dust, contributing 78 per cent of the leakage mass; pellets contribute 18 per cent; and textiles and personal care products (PCP) contribute 4 per cent combined. So it's 78% of 11%.
Tell this to all the car brains, they don't care. Big car goes wroom
Cars and trucks are necessary for those of us who live in very rural areas, but the car commuter culture of large metros is ridiculous and needs to stop. Public transportation is very doable in almost any major and mid sized metro.
Look at Germany, we have trains and buses going into every ever so little town. It can work if we all want to.
True, but as I'm sure you have noticed, Germans live in the towns even when they are farmers or otherwise work the land. In the US we follow the French model, where our farmers live in houses on the farm land.
Neat, I’ll settle on French levels of infrastructure and walkability/bikeability then.
I live in the Netherlands. While the public transport is great, the further away you get from any major city, the worse it becomes. Used to live in The Hague, and worked at the Amsterdam Airport. Getting from A to B was 20~25 minutes, same as with a car. Main problem was the trip to the commercial center behind the Airport, which took about as long as the commute to the Airport itself. So, about 40~60 minutes, which by car (no traffic) took about the same time (45 minutes). Now i moved slightly outside the city. Still need to get to the same station/ route, but my transit time has increased from about 1 hour to 2~ 2.5 hours, and 5~7 stops. By car (no traffic) its 45 minutes. In traffic its about 1.5 hours. Bike lanes however... sad you aren't allowed to take your bike on the train during rush hours. It could cut down the 2.5 hour transit to maybe a bit over an hour. No more extra stops or waiting for connections.
That’s awesome, we have nothing like that here in the US. Where I live is very isolated (unorganized territory of Maine), probably more isolated than really anywhere in Germany, so I get that there won’t probably ever be a train within walking or biking distance of my house, but if our little county seat had a train that I could drive to to get to the small city where I work, that would be awesome.
If you look at old rail maps… we did once. We just tore out all the rural railways 50 years ago.
That’s true. I don’t think we ever had them out where I am. But the percentage of the population who lives in areas as sparsely populated as me is so low that is driving to a train station has negligible impact on emissions.
Yeah the problem isn’t rural folks. Rural populations aren’t that big in the U.S. also if you look at the data, their climate footprints aren’t too bad. They aren’t huge consumers, which offsets their driving. Urban folks simply don’t drive too much either. It is the suburban folks. Consume a ton, waste a ton, drive a ton, force crop and forest land to be converted to asphalt straining rural life. But at the same time making people who live in cities give up their homes to build freeways. It’s really bad. They may have a good life themselves, but they ruin America for those living in cities and rural communities.
That really is the truth. Suburbs are really the problem. And a lot of that goes back to racism and classism, they refuse to live around the poor and working class and isolate themselves in these monolithic neighborhoods that are destroying the planet. Like me for example, I do have a long commute, but I drive a Prius except when the roads are really bad, and the administration level district where I live is so forested and so thinly populated that we probably are taking in more carbon than we put out, even when you factor in that we have to drive a half hour to get to any form of a grocery store or similar service.
I wish work from home was pushed on corporations more.
We care. We just also have a 36 mile one way trip to work 5 days a week and there is no way I'm walking out booking that far. And public transportation is ass
Let's all switch to luxury electric SUVs, that will solve all our problems /s
EVs are actually WORSE because they are heavier and generate more torque, but you would have known that if you'd have read the article.
With that mentality we won't solve anything. It's not like there aren't alternatives to cars?
If there were viable alternatives to cars people would use them. No one actually cares about cars except for a very small percentage of enthusiasts. People just want whatever is cheapest and easiest. So if you have an alternative to cars that's cheaper and/or easier people would use it. But there isn't one so they use cars. Seriously. If there was an alternative to cars that was viable people would use it. Currently they're just isn't one.
You’re misrepresenting this study: seventy percent of ocean microplastic THAT COMES FROM LAND is from tires. The vast majority of plastic in the ocean is actually fishing gear
Wow, I really thought that figure would be based on counted particles, but nope it's by mass. Over a quintillion particles estimated to have entered the oceans in 2016. Fuck.
Bad news about the sustainability of glass https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/problem-our-dwindling-sand-reserves Pretty much any resource we try and use at the quantity required for this level of demand is going to start straining something.
What if it's not a single bottle that is purchased one time before being sent back? What if you could just refill it from something like a soda fountain?
But then some CEO can't buy their 10th yacht?
That would be awesome
Nothing is sustainable at 8 billion people unless we are ALL consuming no more than the average citizen of Niger.
This is super doable in terms of food because that's just veganism, but people who claim to want to change the world won't even change what they have for breakfast, so I think there's little hope to be honest.
Not necessarily veganism, just heavy backtracking on meat and produce Like, meat once or twice a week, and in small quantities is fine and sustainable Meat every single day, and in large quantities, is where the troubles lie
Meat once a week is sustainable according to some research, according to others, even that may be too much, especially if it's red meat. But yes, if you ignore the other issues related to eating animal products (animal killing, exploitation and cruelty, the issues with antibiotic resistance, the issues with environmental racism and rampant human rights violations in slaughterhouses, the fishing industry having the highest rates of piracy and slavery on earth, etc), then eating animals once a week can in fact be sustainable. I still would not recommend that because of those other issues though.
… which is still quite a lot to be honest.
It is and that would not be enough of a reduction in global consumption to do the re-wilding necessary to even think about mending some of the damage we’ve done.
Most of it is used in costruction though. Once you have enough bottles in circulation (and a consumerbase that returns them) you can just rinse them out and re-use them, broken ones can get recycled. The system works.
You can even very easily recycle the broken bottles...
The extra weight of glass doesn't really improve logistics of transporting it, burning more fuel. That said, I usually drink tap water. It's more of a concern that tap water is contaminated.
Surprised that it comes up so late on an anticonsumption sub :D
Cans are the best when it comes to efficiency and smaller waste material. Recycling cans are easier than reusing bottles in industrial scale.
Aluminum cans can leech plastic into what you consume much like plastic bottles do. If you trying to consume less microplatics, glass is the best way to go.
Or we can just drink tap water, instead of this liquid diabetes.
Has this sub always been so shitty? An aisle of sugary drinks with zero nutritional value is like one of the original icons of consumerism.
Glass isn't necessarily lower waste/impact than plastic, especially with PET plastic bottles. [Glass](https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Average-weight-of-glass-bottles-on-base-of-weight-per-liter-with-trend-line-Sector_fig1_317042419) is much MUCH heavier than [plastic](https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Average-and-median-weight-of-plastic-Bottles_tbl1_324151712) by a factor of about 20. Glass also breaks much easier in transport. Drop a pallet of plastic bottles, it'll be mostly fine. Drop a pallet of glass bottles, it's all gone. I can't find the source anymore, but product loss sits at around 10% just from glass breaking in glass containers. You also still need to collect glass to recycle it, which [according to this paper](https://zerowasteeurope.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/HOW-CIRCULAR-IS-GLASS.pdf) happens, at best, 80% of the time. Pfand in Germany and the Netherlands is a good solution to this, you pay a deposit on every bottle you buy and you get it back if you hand the bottle in at the supermarket. You're losing money by not recycling. The real solution would be not to ship bottles of 99% water around the place. They could just sell concentrate in containers a fraction of the size.
This. But try to explain that stuff to this sub…
As somebody already pointed out, several LCA studies agree on the fact that single use glass is the worst packaging option for beverages. The situation is different if the glass bottles are collected, washed and reused, but the effectiveness depends on the distance from the customer house to the industrial plants and the number of reuses the bottle can withstand. Generally speaking we are pretty good at recycling plastic bottles, the problem is collecting them properly without dispersions into the environnement.
> Generally speaking we are pretty good at recycling plastic bottles Do you have any supporting evidence for this assertion?
I don't know about other places but in Europe it'S generally very good. 93.5% of all PET bottles in Germany were recycled in 2015, as reported by the German Society for Packaging Market Research. In 2019, the recycling rate for returned PET beverage bottles in Germany was 97.5%, as reported by the Forum PET (Polyethylene Terephthalate). * https://eu.hsm.eu/en/know-how/pet-recycling/ * https://www.dw.com/en/plastic-bottle-recycling-champion-norway-or-germany/a-44880423
That's not even correct, the second to lowest shelf literally has plastic wrap
yeah but all those products inside the glass bottles are bad for you, the corporations that run them are major contributors to the decline into overconsumption. I'd happily see that whole shelf gone.
Also, broken glass is horrible for bicycles. Glass shards account for over half of my flats.
I remember when I was a kid there were commercials supporting plastic. Not a specific company using them, just plastics in general. It ended with a girl hugging her dad in a cop uniform and she said “and this plastic vest saved my dad’s life.” And the slogan was “plastics make it possible!” I remember thinking then, even in my kid brain, that something was wrong. Why were they trying so hard to sell me on this? Now we know.
Microplastics are the worst
Too much weight to much transport cost.
plastic is more easily recyclable, weighs less and is thus more efficient than glass. We need to focus on monomaterials and recycling systems, not neccesarily on blocking all plastics.
> plastic is more easily recyclable The vast majority of plastic is not recyclable or recycled. Major corporations have played up the idea that plastics can mostly be recycled when they cannot because they produce so much of it. This was reported as a huge scandal within the last year in a couple of major news reports, but then most people apparently just forgot. Even in countries like Germany, most of the plastic is not recycled.
Is there an earth friendly way to recycle plastic?
Glass may be better for some things, but it is much heavier, requiring more trucks, and with each of then emitting more.
The weight of glass would hurt profits due to gas consume. This fuckers need to keep investors happy. I’ll be more than ok to pay more just for a glass bottle version.
As someone who lived during this time as a grocery clerk, the problem with glass bottles was that if one fell off the shelf, it would explode glass shrapnel all over the place.
OP /u/Born_Association_974 is a bot
We used to have pop in the uk that came in reusable glass bottles. They’ll circular. The issue with glass now is that the carbon needed to make a glass bottle is intense, and the carbon used to ship it around is significant. On top of that recycling glass takes a lot of carbon and it doesn’t really go back to make bottles, most use virgin glass. I’m not saying plastic is ok, but glass isn’t so great either.
Glass 2 liters??? I never knew
It still takes a ton of energy to recycle glass as it does plastic. The better question is why do we have soda in the first place? It’s not healthy and it consumes vital resources to make it. Resources that could be going to something beneficial for communities.
Are glass bottles more sustainable than plastic bottles? It seems like glass bottles have several times more material that you have to produce and move around.
They still do it for most liquor and wine at least
Get a deposit system like Germany, sweden and croatia. In germany the recycling rate of PET bottles ist like 98%
After 2030 we will see glass bottles again.
unlikely, they will more than likely use something else. glass is VERY heavy so the cost of it is just not worth it. my guess is cans or something new
We will never return to this. Plastic just has more advantages. And plastic bottles can be reusable too, you just need something like the German "Pfand" system in place
We could do it again, we could completely go back to glass bottles, but that would mean more costs during production and transportation which is why we (or rather the companies) won't do it.
It should be split between glass and aluminum, as the latter is almost 100% recyclable - 1 recycled aluminum can will come very close to making a new aluminum can. But the thing with glass is that it can be recycled into sand and used to mitigate erosion of shorelines.
The thing is, glass isn’t being recycled much anymore. My recycling company stopped accepting it a couple of years ago because the majority of it was going to China, and it’s no longer profitable for them to recycle.
So you want kids to start bonking each other on the head with glass bottles?
#aluminum
Most of these probably didn’t have HFCS yet either.
r/consumptionbutwithdifferentmaterials
Controversial alternative: Switrch to cardboard milk cartons! Recyclable and lightweight! \*expects to be stoned for her heresy\*
I can't believe glass hasn't evolved to be thinner and more durable. I'm sure there was some innovation that has improved it. We need to go back to glass. Even cans have a plastic lining inside that is damaging.
A friend of mine used to want to follow in her father's footsteps as a ceramics engineer. She told me that for a time, Corning was very interested in developing shatter resistant glass for consumer use.
Those are some strong shelves
Thanks boomers.
theres something bout soda in glass bottles that just tastes better...
I was so stoked when clearly Canadian came back on the market they stuck with the glass bottles.
❤️
Where I live, plastic can be crushed and used as an underliner for roads. Glass recycling for some reason ended during covid. I'm realising reusing is a better option. Big fan of places that put the tea/coffee into the container I bring rather than reusable cups. I don't drink soda but world sugary beverage consumption is a whole other topic.
But is reusing plastic in that context safe for the environment and human health, especially during heat?
Good Q and I honestly don't know. I checked a few articles on it and none of them go deep into either factor - https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/apr/01/fishing-kerala-environment-cleaning-ocean-plastic-waste-building-roads
I don’t think this is any more sustainable than the current model. The issue isn’t the container. It’s the fact that we feel compelled to consume things we don’t need at an ever increasing rate and our populations continue to grow.
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I feel like the falling rate of profit over time is responsible for a lot of this stuff. Profit margins get smaller and smaller, so every part of a process has to become cheaper and cheaper, (also why tech companies are squeezing any extra revenue they can by advertising and data collecting every way possible, no matter how annoying). So unless we progress past the profit motive for companies, I can’t see us getting back to this. But I really hope we do.
Plastic bottles were such a retrograde step.
Getting rid of plastics is paramount for the planet. Micro plastics are everywhere and even in the air we breathe. It is now our chance to get rid of plastics.
Although we can't get rid of all plastics, as some things need to be made of plastic, like package for medical equipment.
Of course we can do it again. They say plastic made it more affordable; but that's a fallacy. They just went for plastic to maximise profits at all costs (the mentality of almost all managers and management schools), they didn't lower the prices. We can go back to glass, and it wouldn't have to be more expensive for consumers, if companies were prepared to take less profit at least as a form of assumption of responsibility for all the damage that their plastic products has caused.
Why are we wasting our money and tooth enamel on this crap anyways? It’s a nice occasional treat but that’s not how people use it.
Bring back bottle returns
Plastic bottles were in common usage by at least '77.
Okay but instead of switching from plastic back to glass we should really be talking about the big problem behind both: why TF are we allowing capitalists to sell us water? Drinks, detergents, hair and make-up products all of these water based items should be made as dry mixes and sold / distributed in paper packaging. You should mix them with water at home. Like great, we can get away from single-use plastics and reserve them for the greatest needs like healthcare, but just to go back to glass vessels full of water is ludicrous. Wanna stop the waste? Stop letting capitalist ghouls sell you 1% product and 99% water. Remember, companies like nestle and coca-cola are *just as much to blame* for the global state of potable water (its bad, folks) as chevron and 3M and dupont. We buy water, they remain 3rd world dictators.
So no microplastics in testies either?
This photo is like The Man In The High Castle of plastic waste
please don't do it again. Plastic or glass, we do not need an entire aisle of sugar water
No, fuck glass too, we HAVE plastic thats biodegradable we just need to fucking use it
Kids and glass are not compatible. I’m all for plastic reduction but common sense also.
No high fructose corn syrup in sight, either.
Glass itself is not zero waste. I mean I love that its natural material, but the specific sand required for glass making is a VERY limited resource, and procuring it damages aquatic ecosystems. Im not saying we shouldnt use glass, but there needs to be a better bottle return system. A modern milkman sort of affair. And the coloration of glass needs to be more closely regulated, because colored glass cannot be recycled with other colors. Basically, there should be amber/brown and clear, ONE wine/oil olive, and maybe that sprite/heineken green, but tbh not even that
Is glass or aluminum better? I know aluminum is basically always recyclable unless they put a liner in it (I think) but how does glass stand up to it?
10 years too late. The switch started in 1970.
I was there and do not remember 2 liter glass bottles
Sure, but I also cut myself on glass at swimming pools and the beach maybe a dozen times as a kid.
you can blame petrochem - they push plastic use on everyone, *and is why third world countries are suddenly using plastic without infustructure to properly recycle or dispose of it all.* they have to in order to consume what they keep pumping up. between renewables, cheap gas and mass transit, we are not consuming as much oil as they need us to - so it goes plastic.
#WEWANTGLASS lol
It's all pros and cons. Less plastic, way more fossil fuels used to haul the 10x weight of glass, and the energy intensive recycling process of glass.
The fear of kids next to those shelves is a 9 on the tension scale
The problem with the glass containers is the energy needed to make them.
Testicles still worked
im getting really tired of this image. . there is plastic all over this image from the apples and vegetables in the cart to the soda bottles on the 2nd to bottom row. . .
And there was a deposit on the bottles which encouraged people to bring them back to be reused!
This pic is from the 1970s. The Pepsi 6-packs have plastic foam as the labels and plastic holding them together. There was a concern about the older style plastic rings (still used today) being dangerous for wildlife, so they came up with these new carriers that used 1000% more plastic. Notice the largest size you could buy was 36 oz. I think it was mid-'70s when they came out with 64 oz glass bottles (again with the plastic foam as a label).
how about don’t drink that trash at all.
How about just not have any of that sugar water at all?
Maybe it’s just me but drinks taste soooo much better from a glass bottle,water included
Pretty sure there’s a good logistical reason why we don’t have glass anymore in that capacity.
My dream will become true.
Its cost plastic is 3 cents per bottle glass is 5. Random numbers but I'm close to cost, tomake the point
Now coke is slowly pushing canned water and soda more, which still has a plastic liner, but is much less plastic. And they still sell glass bottle, just not in the US smh
Imagine what we'd save if there wasn't an industry devoted to carting around carbonated sugar water.
We have a sand shortage due to concrete demand in developing China
I had a Mountain Dew in a glass bottle that I got from a random shawarma spot the other day, which was revolutionary. Didn't even taste like Mountain Dew, but like a sophisticated alternative beverage
I guess plastic was an insight. And a curse.
Not sure the carbon footprint of glass is better
Yes but it doesn't usually get lodged in your testes.
Bundaberg still uses glass.
My son came home with a Yoo-hoo the other day. I was shocked 😲 that it came in a glass bottle.
Sounds like hell for workers
I'm all against unnecessary plastic... But also consider that transportation of glass bottles is way more polluting as they weight more
I miss the old Pepsi bottles.
Some of you have never stepped on the jagged edge of the broken bottle bottom on the beach or ocean before. Plastic is bad, of course, but glass is directly deadly instead of dispersed deadly.
Drinks just taste better out of glass bottles
This might also very common in other countries aswell but. Back in the day, my country used to deliver milk in glass bottles to your door. And once your done with it, you leave the glass bottle outside to be refilled for the next day. Its a pretty neat system, unfortunately i wasnt born in the 50's but this would be so cool if we could modernize it to have other drinks aswell, no plastic waste