> is fully recyclable
Glass if fully recyclable and reusable.
Glass if fully recyclable and reusable.
The issue with glass is that it requires a lot of energy to produce and recycle, and is heavy, which means more energy to transport it.
Properly recycled plastics may in fact be the most environmentally friendly option ...
What is not useful is to put a blanket 'bad' label on plastics. This is not a simple issue and it requires comprehensive studies on a case by case basis.
A single-use item can be made very cheaply, and that includes amount of material, weight, etc. which can be a very efficient use of material and energy overall on the condition (big one) that recycling/disposal is also efficient.
For example, in supermartkets single-use plastic bag were very thin (not much plastic used). They are gone and now if you need a bag they'll give you one (here in the UK) that uses much more plastic/material. It would have been much better to keep those flimsy bags in case you need one, but to charge you enough for them to encourage you to bring your own as much as possible.
There is no environmentally friendly way to recycle plastics or glass because the require way more energy to recycle than they take to produce. Only aluminum requires more energy to extract (by electrolyzing bauxite) than to recycle so about 30-50% of aluminum sold in the US is recycled. The rest is virgin aluminum that has to be extracted to meet demand - the entire world would use only recycled aluminum if it could.
I don't predict new plastics and "virgin" plastics will necessarily disappear, but certainly a change in costs of oil would predicate a reevaluation to the market's love affair with new plastics.
> And because the theoretical energy savings of glass recycling appear to be relatively slim, it could mean that actual savings depend on lots of devilish details — how far the glass is shipped, how dispersed are the neighborhoods from which glass is collected, whether people make special car trips to recycling centers, etc.
Glass recycling is only efficient when most parameters are just right to make it economical. That includes local supply and demand of the right kind of inputs/outputs to reduce transportation and collection costs, whether a truck collects the recyclables or if homeless people do it, etc.
The margin for glass recycling is razor thin compared to aluminum so the former is rarely as environmentally friendly as the latter (although I'm excited to see what newer furnace tech can do)
Common issues:
- Manufacturing glass == high heat, heat == carbon.
- Reusing glass bottles involve cleaning, and the impact of warm water and soap is significant.
- Glass bottles are heavier than plastic. So delivering a bottle of coke in a glass bottle supposedly uses more resources than a plastic bottle. (Walmart used this to assert that Sam's Club foam cups were friendlier than cardboard a few years ago)
Basically, unless you ride a bike to the ocean, collect saltwater with an unbleached paper straw, and desalinate it using a solar-powered device that weighs less than 5 pounds, you are a horrible person.
Disposal/recycling? Glass is renewable. It's sand. It's rock.
Crush it up, dump it in the ocean and make more. With solar powered furnaces and ultra-thin tolerances, I guess.
... and you'd better be burning plant-based calories buddy
e.g. a glass bottle in a woodland setting could stay in that form for thousands of years. A paper bottle would last a few weeks at most.
You can also simply put them through a crusher/pulverize two or three times to turn them back into sand. I'm not really sure intact glass is a big environmental problem though. Animals could get stuck in intact bottles or cut themselves on sharp glass, but otherwise I believe glass is nontoxic, generally quite inert, and as far as nature is concerned indistinguishable from other naturally occurring minerals (obsidian in particular comes to mind.)
When I moved into my home in 2006, I found circa 1985 era milk cartons and juiceboxes buried in the garden. (i think they were used to start seeds) The milk carton was degrading, the juice box, not so much.
wax, etc, remains underground, a bit like coal, or oil, long term.