[thomasguide]

This is very interesting, but I can’t help but feel that a glass bottle with a metal cap (and one of those Dutch condiment spatulas) would be just fine for all these applications and also be more easily and effectively reused and recycled.

I re-use jam jars for food storage, drinking glasses, mini herb gardens, etc. and could incorporate bottles, jars, and other glass containers into a variety of needs around the house if they were designed with second and third lives in mind.

Add in health effects of microplastics/chemical leaching and glass is again a winner.

Transportation costs and breakage are perhaps higher, but maybe that’s a cost we should accept?

[panta]

> Transportation costs and breakage are perhaps higher, but maybe that’s a cost we should accept?

I suspect that transportation and breakage costs are higher only because we don't account for externalities when considering plastic: in other words producers don't sustain the full costs and are effectively subsidized by the society at large and the environment (through increased healthcare spending, lower QOL, higher obesity rates, lower fertility, and other environmental costs that will be sustained by future generations).

[thomasguide]

Yes, this is a good point. Plastic is cheap because producers don’t pay the true costs.

There are externalities with glass too (think shattered bottles in public spaces) but my feeling is they’re fewer and less earth-destroying.

[nightski]

Glass has externalities as well. If all transportation weight is significantly higher that is going to have a large impact on global warming until we switch to clean transportation which to be frank is a long ways off if we are being honest.

[ASalazarMX]

Meat, plastics, metals, gas, everything that generates greenhouse gases in significant amounts has to become costlier so people consume it less.

It's been proven time after time that we won't reduce emissions by appealing to the social conscience of people and corporations, but everybody obeys economic measures.

[tremon]

and one of those Dutch condiment spatulas

For reference, I assume you mean a bottle scraper here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bottle_scraper

They're not specifically intended for condiments (most jam jars are low and wide enough that they can be scraped with a spoon), but for storing more viscous liquids in larger glass (milk) bottles, like yoghurt or vla.

[sizzle]

Wow where has this been all my life?!? So much wasted product thrown away in bottles

[ASalazarMX]

So many nearly empty Nutella jars have died for nothing.

[LargoLasskhyfv]

You know? Maybe a few dozen standard sized and broad/wide necked tops made out of laboratory grade glass would do. That stuff is almost indestructible and does not leach or take on anything in the concentrations used for food/drink stuff. Not even tea or coffee stains! So there is the question of the returns. Why returning when you could have a refill machine in store which could clean them fast in safe ways before refilling? For anything more than a few bottles, use reusable kegs and plug them into an appliance at home? Or those watercooler canisters? I recently saw milk in a plastic bag again, like it has been about 40 years ago?

Interestingly that bag wasn't sloppy or wobbly at all, because on one side it had a handle, which felt like it was inflated with something, which made it stiff. Still one time use only, though less material.

[9dev]

For reference, this is what we do with beer bottles in Germany. There’s two standard bottle types which you can return to shops, which take any brand, as long as it’s the standard type. They return them to a cleaning facility which distributes them back to the breweries (extremely simplified, there’s lots of details like a mandatory deposit on reusable bottles consumers pay to incentivise returning them to stores). But basically, bottles get reused as long as they’re usable. It works quite well!

[LargoLasskhyfv]

Nopetynope. I don't remember where exactly anymore because I rarely buy beer, but I think it was Lidl where I returned some Tsingtao bottles and heard the machine crushing them, thinking WTF?!

Edit: I know this isn't true for every glass bottle, but it happens. There are one way glass bottles in .de

Which you still have to return, to get the 8 or 15 cents(don't know exactly) back if you care.

[9dev]

Yeah, there are some intricacies as I said, didn't want to turn this into a long-form essay (because that's what you need to describe anything formalised in Germany). Lidl doesn't participate in the bottle sharing initiative as far as I know for example; differently-shaped, one-way bottles are definitely a thing; and sometimes, there are deposit machines that for some reason don't accept a local brewery, although they should.

But all in all, this system definitely ensures at least a big part of German bottles are actually reused multiple times.

[LargoLasskhyfv]

K, but what I really meant to say was rather why do the bottle return thing at all, if you could have a few standard bottles which last decades, and fill them at the store, supermarket, etc. from kegs, canisters, and return only those, instead of single bottles?

Edit: where the kegs/canisters take the part of standardized liquid containers, as it is common in gastronomy already?

Just need to have a machine which can do the refills from store to longlife bottle quickly and clean at the store.

Editedit: Trying a braindump, from my impressions over the past decades, even long before "Grüner Punkt" and other return systems, just regarding bottles.

In larger supermarkets, and stores specializing in selling bottled stuff, there are always large areas for the returns, inside and outside. All for gathering and storing that stuff, to send it back to whereever and whenever. Sometimes with larger forklifts, stacking pallets/boxes 3 storeys high. (about 9 to 12 pallets, or boxes)

This is the cult of the bottle! Make work!

[vestrigi]

So you mean local bottling at each store with standard bottles? I like the idea, but the challenges are quite tough. - No branding/consumer information possible on the bottle - carbonized beverages can‘t just be poured in free air like juice or milk, a large facility is needed - beverage stores would have to pump dozens of different beverages through one machine, that would always mix a little bit of the last filling - that facility must follow strict hygiene requirements which makes it expensive

[thomasguide]

Plastic American-style milk bottles are funnily enough one of the only easily recycled plastics, if I am remembering correctly.

Standardized glass containers would be useful, although in some ways already exist (mason jars usually accept common lids, for instance).

What we need is a shift in mentality away from a plastic-first approach.

“I’ve got one word for you kid: glass.”

[ASalazarMX]

> Plastic American-style milk bottles are funnily enough one of the only easily recycled plastics, if I am remembering correctly.

I don't know about the recyclability of those plastics, but I wouldn't be surprised. They're basically two pieces of plastic screwed together without any seal, and it works well enough!

[KennyBlanken]

That sound you heard was me rolling my eyes at the bunch of nonsense they started off with, which seemed sucked straight from the mouth of a plastics industry PR lackey. The squeeze nipple thingy is pretty brilliant, but an ecological disaster.

[thomasguide]

As a cook I find the squeeze actually sort of frustrating. Sometimes it usefully delivers the right amount of ketchup (or mustard, or whatever) to its destination; mostly it splatters. In any case I still have to use a knife to spread it around.

Solving the leaky bottle upside down problem is too narrow a focus.

[jhugo]

The trick is to give the bottle a vigorous single shake before opening it, so the air is at the end away from the nozzle. Then there's no splattering.

[LargoLasskhyfv]

McDonalds does that with cardridges in a (don't know the exact word) squeeze gun, and it mostly comes out in the same volume. They also had funnels for ketchup and mustard, where you pushed once, and got more or less the same amounts per push.

[spiffytech]

I remember when ketchup came in glass bottles and you had to use a knife to get it out. I'm much happier with the squeeze bottle era. I like reusability, but I also like things not being a pain to use.