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Comment by netfire | Hacker News Reader

The problem with glass is that it isn’t biodegradable. If it gets broken, it can cause a hazard for humans and wildlife. If it gets thrown away, it’s not going to break down. Glass is good for the ideal case, but not great for the other use cases. For milk and juice, it’s seems like thick paper might be a better option, since it’s biodegradable and recyclable.

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Glass is literally molten sand. It will break down just like the rock breaks down. It's not toxic or hazardous, except when it's freshly shattered, but these super sharp edges weather relatively quickly, after which they aren't any sharper than natural found rock. This not to say that we should just don't care and throw away glass anywhere we want, but it's really not a huge deal, unless you hate seeing glass pebbles among normal rock pebbles.

> It's not toxic or hazardous, except when it's freshly shattered, but these super sharp edges weather relatively quickly, after which they aren't any sharper than natural found rock.

Glass actually takes a long time to lose its sharp edge unless it's dumped in a river or the ocean, which is in fact a great way to dispose of glass.

There really is no better way to dispose of garbage than dumping glass in the ocean... returning silica to its source in a way that doesn't look bad.

If you throw it into a water then somebody can step on it and hurt their feet.

Presumably they don't mean to scatter freshly shattered glass along swimming beaches. There's a lot of ocean where people aren't walking.

This all hinges on what you mean by “relatively fast”. If glass is being shattered and ends up being a hazard for years, this is much worse than a goopy old discarded plastic bottle, regardless of the perceived ugliness of the latter.

> this is much worse than a goopy old discarded plastic bottle

No, over time the plastic bottle will weather into cell-scale microplastic particles and play indefinite havoc with local wildlife. Glass will not.

Glass will cut my feet and shred my tires. The wildlife is largely unaffected. There'd still be trees, birds, animals, etc. You're blowing it out of proportion.

Glass is essentially sand. Sure it may be sharp when it just broke, but it gets dull pretty fast in nature.

Of all the things that got dumped onto this beach at Ft Bragg, glass was the least problematic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_Beach_(Fort_Bragg,_Calif...

additionally, isnt glass a semi natural occurring substance? Im pretty sure ive heard of lightning strikes in deserts/sand that created glass.

I never heard of that but TIL it's called Fulgurite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulgurite

Glass is also created by volcanoes; we call that obsidian.

Interesting, there is a community for sea glass..

https://seaglassassociation.org/

> dull pretty fast in nature

Especially when a critter chews on it accidentally, or it gets crushed under foot and some ends up in the foot.

It's the dulling process that sucks.

I once got a stick stuck in my foot. Maybe we should ban those.

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