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Comment by slau | Hacker News Reader

Recycling glass is terribly inefficient. It’s so heavy that it requires a ridiculous amount of energy to heat up, and even then needs a very high amount of “fresh” glass to keep it usable.

In addition, transporting glass is inefficient, and it is much more prone to breakages.

The real issue is the fact that every company gets to have their own plastic bottle design, with 3-4 different plastic types that have to be triaged. They typically also want way thicker bottles than required because they feel more premium.

A government that mandates a specific shared plastic bottle designed to be recyclable would be much, much ecologically effective than switching back to glass.

I don’t know if metal cans or tetrapack are better.

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Back when beverages came in glass bottles, they would sterilize and refill them rather than recycle them. Much less energy and no fresh glass required.

I've got an old 7up bottle that was about 20 years old when I bought it in a 6-pack.

>A government that mandates a specific shared plastic bottle designed to be recyclable would be much, much ecologically effective than switching back to glass.

Given the thread we're in that bottle will some type of unimaginable cancer after 30 years and in 2070 people will be talking about how big plastic captured government.

Glass on the other hand is the definition of inert, who cares if it's more expensive if it keeps us alive longer?

The people who live near the glass recycling foundries, and the environmentalists pissed at the footprint of the continual energy requirement to melt it all down and move it around.

Also, it doesn't further enrich/entrench the oil industry to the same degree as most plastics based manufacturing does.

Environmentalists are pissed wind turbines kill birds. We should stop paying attention to people who want us to live in a cave licking moss.

> Environmentalists are pissed wind turbines kill birds.

Those are not environmentalist, but people who are trying to find any excuses to oppose renewable energy. Environmentalists know that wind turbines kill a fraction of the numbers of birds killed by things like house cats or power lines.

It requires significantly less energy than producing new glass. The reasons glass isn't recycled more than it is in the US are political and educational. Many European countries recycle 90% of the glass.

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