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Comment by Swoerd123 | Hacker News Reader

This is common for a huge number of products, ranging from cosmetics, consumables, pharmaceuticals, bottled water, etc.

For carbon footprint also, I believe. For bottled water at least, manufacturing the bottle has by far the most environmental impact, even more so than the shipping/transportation part of the process (which you'd think would be severe, as water is heavy).

That's an interesting tidbit. Every time there is a suggestion we switch to reusable glass bottles instead of plastic, someone raises the issue of the extra weight of the bottle which will lead to greater carbon emissions during transport.

But if, as you say the largest emission comes from manufacturing the plastic bottle, not the transport of the bottle AND the content; then it seems possible to lower the carbon footprint by switching to glass (on top of the other advantages like reducing landfill use/litterring/environmental pollution).

Maybe both making a glass and plastic bottle take more energy to make then in transport? And or you have to transport the empties back to clean and refill?

Cleaning will use almost as much water and much more energy than filling it. In industrial settings you must be REALLY sure that the bottle is clean, so a lot of hot water.

>someone raises the issue of the extra weight of the bottle which will lead to greater carbon emissions during transport

Lmao, that's on the order of 1-2%.

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