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Comment by majewsky | Hacker News Reader

Honest question: What will plastic bottles be replaced with that's more environmentally friendly? I can easily see plastic bags being replaced by jute bags, but the only alternative material for bottles that I know of is glass, which does not seem like a good alternative given its weight and fragility (and possibly energy use during production).

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http://www.algopack.com/indexgb.php makes bottles out of seaweed (brown algae) and there're other companies trying to make reuseable bioplastic bottles out of sugarcane

> reuseable bioplastic bottles

That's not any better if they still don't degrade, no?

Bioplastic (PLA) is biodegradable in a commercial facility, unlike petroleum-based bottle plastic (PET)

The key point being that someone has to get the bottle back to the facility instead of throwing it in the trash, or worse, littering.

That's true, but bioplastics degrade on timelines that are magnitudes smaller than actual plastic.

Glass bottles can be made to be sturdy. In Germany there is a glass beverage reuse system, where the empty bottles get returned for credit, washed, refilled and relabeled. The bottles exhibit dull rings where they rub against each other in the process, but otherwise they look new.

I suspect that only single-use bottles are banned. The sturdier, reusable plastic bottles, with a deposit encouraging returns, should be the best option in terms of energy and material over its lifetime.

The headline of the article says as much ;)

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