[ars]

> but intact bottles can be cleaned and refilled

Only a very small percent of them. You are probably thinking of soda bottles, and yes, they used to do that. But today it's plastic bottles (and I'm glad for it!). Milk in glass bottles is all but dead.

Most glass these days is jars for olives, and salsa, and tomato sauce, and other random things, where there is just not scale to collect them. It's not anymore all uniform, every jar is a difference size.

Beer from the very largest companies might still work, although I think it's mostly cans now. But there are a lot of small producers, and routing the glass back to them would be too expensive.

We haven't even touched on how there is basically no point in doing it anyway. The entire crust of the planet is basically made of glass. We can't run out without dismantling (discrusting? :) the planet. It's also harmless to dispose of, just crush it first.

Recycle metal, burn plastic and paper (for energy!! not for disposal!!), crush and landfill glass and other organics. Those are the most environmentally friendly options.

[QAPereo]

It takes far more energy to make new glass than to clean and reuse old glass. Even melting existing glass is valuable, as it lowers the melting point of the raw materials and therefore energy expenditure. Until glass manufacture uses solar or wind or something similar, it’s an issue.

The problem isn’t a lack of silica, it’s yet more waste of energy and pollution purely screwing is over.