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Comment by vallassy | Hacker News Reader

I agree with every point here, and they all make a lot of sense... yet most alcoholic beverages are shipped to the consumer in glass bottles, including even the cheapest beers.

I have seen some drinks shipped in plastic, so it is possible to do, I wonder if glass packaging is a 'premium' thing. Though, if they can do it for cheap beer, then I'm sure they can do it for non-alcoholic drinks on scale.

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It's about reducing costs for the producers and supermarkets, ignoring externalities. That is, tons of plastic that doesn't get recycled and goes to the landfill. Now the issue seems worse as another important externality are adverse effects to human health.

I can't believe costs of switching to glass or ceramic are that high. I've bought tons of inexpensive dairy and desserts that came packaged using those materials. But since most customers don't care, they tend to use plastic.

I've seen and had alcohol in plastic. They generally seem to do fine.

But damn did it feel cheap in a bad way. Being cheap is obviously one of the reasons we use plastic containers, but the feeling associated with plastic alcohol is just plain irrationally bad.

a 500 ml Al can weights 13 grams. life knows if we can skim down its weight if we don't have self openers, the price if we develop a better recycling system etc.

if plastics have impact on human health, how many $ we can save for using re-usable glass and metal?

Aluminum cans are lined in plastic.

I think it's about steel cans?

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