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Comment by TaylorAlexander | Hacker News Reader

Well we could save fuel by making the sodas slightly smaller to account for the weight of the glass. Technically not the same but it might do the trick. And we wouldn’t be recycling them, we’d be washing and reusing them. We can charge deposit fees to stimulate this, something that Coca Cola has worked hard to oppose even for plastic recycling. But it could be done.

In all I bet someone has done or could do a detailed study on this. My internet comment isn’t going to make this a law so you needn’t worry about my lack of research, but a real proposal should examine these factors.

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>And we wouldn’t be recycling them, we’d be washing and reusing them.

Ok, so how much extra fuel is used by trucking all this glass back to a handful of bottling plants that are hundreds of miles away? I guess the deposit fee thing might work.

Personally, I really wonder if using aluminum isn't more environmentally friendly than this. Aluminum cans/bottles are extremely thin and lightweight, and can be easily recycled, and are one of the few things we actually do recycle effectively today, even paying people for used cans. Of course, some people complain that aluminum cans add a flavor to the drink, and there's also the issue of the plastic coating used inside modern cans.

Personally, it seems to me that most of these issues would go away if we as a society actually committed to developing serious recycling infrastructure and using it, even if it means extra taxes somewhere (whether it's directly on end-users, or on producers of plastic products).

Like I said I do not know the answers to these questions, I am only describing a possible scenario. Someone would need to research the best solutions. Aluminum does use a lot of energy to refine.

I have seen 24 ounce aluminum cans for beer though so we could see large American sodas in big cans. Not resealable though.

I think if we are willing to commit to building infrastructure, there is a lot to like about washing glass bottles. In at least one of the Nordic countries they require the use of a standard glass bottle with paper labels that wash off. With this, bottles can be returned to the closest bottler even if it’s a different brand. This keeps travel low. If bottling plants are near population centers the carbon cost of bottle transportation can be kept low.

Aluminum uses a lot of energy to refine, but not to recycle AFAIK. Notice that aluminum is easily the most profitable thing for people to recycle; people can collect cans and take them to a recycler and get paid a fair amount of money. The same just isn't true of almost anything else (except probably copper, and of course precious metals). Even steel, which is far more dense, doesn't fetch nearly as much in scrap value.

The thing about standard glass bottles sounds pretty good, but I can't imagine that ever being legislated here in the US. It would have to be Federal, and there's no way you'll get Congresspeople from across the country to agree to something like that. It can't be state-based because then it wouldn't work: you wouldn't be able to get the standard bottle adopted even within a single city, because part of the city is in one state and part is in another state or two.

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