[ad_hominem]

Maybe the reason is because of stronger food safety laws and tort law.

If some guy used his bottle as a hammer for several months before turning it in for recycling, then someone cuts their hand on a jagged edge or drinks a glass sliver, that's a multi-million dollar lawsuit. Unlikely maybe but at Coca-Cola scale I imagine things like that will happen eventually.

These companies would have to have sophisticated QA processes, or melt down and re-cast the bottles to ensure the food safety of their supply chain against millions of chaos monkeys.

Edit: Here I just did a Google search for the butthurt downvoters that proves there is extra QA that needs to be done. From an Oregon glass bottling reuse program:[1]

> Among other attributes, the machinery features an electronic sensor that uses X-ray equipment to image each bottle, detecting flaws in the glass, as well as mold and other contaminants, Bailey said. That step will reject any bottles that are chipped or contaminated.

[1]: https://resource-recycling.com/recycling/2018/03/13/oregon-e...

[kevin_b_er]

Why should laws to protect people be deleted and laws added to protect corporations?

You base laws that protect the well being of the citizenry into a tort reform call. Protecting corporations that abuse the public does not improve the lives of the public. It just improves the profit margin.

The basis of "tort reform" is a panic assessment that lawsuits run wild and the only solution is to indemnify the rich and powerful. This lets them abuse the public even more.

Your link implies this is for liability, but it could just as easily be a filtering step so that the bottles provided are up to a certain quality standard to be readily reused.

The root problem is the bottles are cheaper to make out of disposable material. The cost burden is shifted to The People over a longer term. This is the tragedy of the commons.

[blacksmith_tb]

That's quite a hypothetical - if there were a rash of lawsuits the lead up to Coke being sold in 2 liter plastic bottles, that would be indicative, but I am not aware of anything like that - and you'd expect there'd be no glass bottles of anything (beer, mustard, maple syrup) if that was the case.

[ad_hominem]

> you'd expect there'd be no glass bottles of anything (beer, mustard, maple syrup) if that was the case

That's completely different - you're confusing recycling with reuse. The bottles you're referring to are made anew from glass that has been smashed into cullet and re-cast into new glass.

What the commenters above are advocating are thicker glass bottles that are washed and reused as-is, i.e. reuse.

Different QA concerns when you're manufacturing fresh glass versus collecting it from randos

[layoutIfNeeded]

Bullshit. The Club Mate I'm drinking right now came in a reused glass bottle. Some of these bottles have more wear on the outside, some of them look pristine.