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by ams6110
3401 days ago
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Glass bottles are heavy. Trucking all that extra weight (compared to plastic) around uses more fuel resulting in more CO2 emissions. They also have to be thoroughly washed and sanitized before re-use, which uses more energy. There is a reason that plastic replaced almost all use of glass bottles for beverages. |
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Plastic milk containers and bottles have to be thoroughly washed before recycling as the plastic is incredibly easy to corrupt with contaminants. Every roadside recycling scheme I've been a part of has required all tins, bottles and glass to be washed before recycling. (Seems pointless in the case of tins as the food debris will be burnt off along with paint etc as the metals are melted).
PET washing in a recycling line needs to be higher temperature as they also use the washing to disolve the glues used for outside labels etc.
The integrated washing of all bottles joining a reusable glass bottle line likely used a fraction of the cleaning energy now expended.