I imagine all plastics will be out of the question. I’m wondering about what ways food packaging might become regulated to upcycling in the domestic or even commercial space. Assuming energy remains a $ scarce $ commodity I don’t imagine recycling glass will be super practical as a replacement. Do we move to more unpackaged goods and bring our own containers to fill at markets? Do we start running two way logistics chains where a more durable glass container is bought and returned to market? How do we achieve a lower energy state of normal in packaging goods?
I expect they’ll move back to earlier packaging materials like glass, metal tins, and waxed paper.
Why do we need the expense of returning glass bottles for washing and reuse, when glass recycling works and is much cheaper?
Washing and reusing is much more environmentally friendly than recycling. It may be more expensive because of the current societal/legal environment but given the right incentives, it doesn’t have to be.
It would be amazing if a standard glass bottle was adopted. That way they can be collected, cleaned and reused by any beverage company.
German beer/water/juice bottles are mostly standardized. There are some massive warts in the system unfortunately: The deposit is legally mandated but the bottles are private standards. Hence breweries/bottling companies are increasingly deviating from the standard bottles for marketing reasons. And there’s a separate single-use flimsy-plastic deposit system used by discount stores which is very effective at collecting bottles for recycling but doesn’t foster reuse.
However, I find it ridiculous that we’re transporting all that water at all even though tap water here is at least as drinkable as the bottled water.
beer
The usual 0.5L beer bottle:
water
A couple of different types here, some 0.7L, some 1L, some glass, some plastic, but all multi-use deposit bottles.
I was not under the impression that glass recycling penciled out (as in, it costs more to recycle than make new). My area crushes “recycled” glass and uses it to cover landfills (which is better than having it inside the landfill, but it still leaves the consumer system).
With return policies we don’t need to go through actual recycling methods. I don’t know if growlers are popular in your area but it’s pretty cheap energy-wise to just sanitize a returned jug.
Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle… specifically in that order.
Consider simply the energy use…
Heating up water to high preassure steam to sterilize bottles uses way less energy than it takes to melt glass, keep it at the correct temperature, reform the bottle, letting it cool slowly (to prevent cracking) and steam clean it before filling the new bottle.
If anything we will see a new focus on the “reuse” part of the “reduce, reuse, recyle” process.
There is a reson as to why the verbs in the process are ordered in that way…
The most environmentally friendly action, is to reduce our consumption of materials, if that is not possible, then we should reuse the finnished product for as long as possible, if that is not possible, then we should recycle the materials into a new and better product rather than digging up more materieal.
Glass recycling works but its far more energy intensive. The saying was Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and it was in that order for a reason.
Does this account for the energy used in transporting the used bottles to the collection/sorting facility > washing facility > bottling facility?
Personally I’m more in favor of aluminum containers. Aluminum is lighter than glass, less prone to breakage during delivery or recollection, cheaper to recycle than it is to mine & refine, and has a lot more potential uses post-recyling than glass.
The washing and bottling facilities are usually the same place. Dirty bottles go in one side, get cleaned and refilled, and then come out the other side.
The way this used to work is that the user returned the glass bottles they bought when they went to the store to get more of the product. 6 pack of beer? When you returned to buy another 6 pack you’d drop off your empties and the local brewer would pick up the empties as they delivered full ones. Same thing with soda bottles and milk bottles.
The reason we quit doing it is because the bottlers got centralized and moved hundreds, or even thousands, of miles away from the consumer and shipping glass containers with their relatively high weight was too expensive. If we returned to local bottling plants we could also easily return to glass packaging for liquids.
Aluminum sucks for a lot of things, particularly anything acidic. You can work around that by lining the container, usually with plastic but then you’re almost back where you started.
Ideally we wouldn’t be recycling much glass, we’d be reusing it but even for aluminum containers its still less energy intensive to reuse them, by sanitizing, than it is to recycle them.
I can’t be arsed to do the math right now but trust me, it takes a lot less energy to heat a small quantity of water to boiling and hold it there for 10 minutes than it does to melt an aluminum or glass container.
[Citation needed]
As fireweed said, I think it is too energy intensive especially with the contamination issues.
I think it would be interesting if packaging in many areas was standardized to actually useful products, like if products came in aesthetically designed drinking glasses and dinnerware.
I think it might be more effective to ask how this is/was done in other parts of the world presently. I’ve never been outside of North America except for visiting Hawaii once. I’ve seen documentaries about foreign bazaars and know the basic history of the Roman Fora, but I don’t know how this translates to or evolves to meet the needs of Western culture presently and visa versa.
Those aren’t really good either. Even glass, as much as it is better, still needs yo be washed and reused which uses more aggressive chemicals than most would be comfortable with.
Fact is that like everything in life, stuff is a tradeoff. Can we wash and re-use glass without aggressive water harming cleaning fluids? Sure. But that means more danger from it. We could also use degradable plastics but those are problematic as well. Tins are an issue in general plus they can only be used for some foods. Waxed paper is even trickier to recycle than most other things, not durable, and again only suited for some foods.
Ultimately, it’s health vs recyclability. There’s always a tradeoff.
Your criticisms about washing are only valid if we assume liquid water cleaning. Superheated steam will burn off any organic material without any additional cleaning chemicals.
It takes around 70% more energy to melt glass into glass than to melt sand into glass.