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Rulecycling
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this post was submitted on 23 May 2025
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Ban plastic for consumables, glass and cardboard forever!!!
Glass bottles aren’t a free win. Glass is very heavy to transport and extremely energy-intensive to manufacture. It made sense back when people hardly drank any soda. It still makes sense for things like condiments (soy sauce, vinegar, etc) and alcoholic drinks but it doesn’t make any sense for everyday drinks like water or soda.
We should be investing in better municipal water treatment facilities so that tap water doesn’t taste awful. Where I live the tap water is horrible but I’ve visited places where the tap water tastes perfectly clean and pleasant. If we had universally tasty tap water then people would stop buying plastic water bottles.
As for soda, I could see glass bottles being excellent if we could bring consumption down to a reasonable level. Many people guzzle soda as if it were water which is both terrible for their health and the environment.
Where glass wins big is in reusability. We need to get people to refill/reuse their glass bottles rather than recycling them.
Yes, it’s just hard to do, especially for people without a car. Hauling a large number of heavy glass bottles to the grocery store on public transit is quite a burden!
That's great, now how?
Do you think if this message alone spread (it already has) that anyone is going to take it seriously? The top polluters and the ones deciding what our packaging is like are the most wealthy corporations on Earth and they are the ones doing the most climate damage, and the ones who control the narrative and our politics.
Do you think "ban plastics" will ever be a populist political talking point in these conditions? Do you think it would gain momentum?
Or are we looking at it wrong? What if more of us targeted the system that is sustaining climate destruction with an actual populist idea? What if we started wresting control and money away from the companies filling our sea with plastic?
Do you want to spread a message of lasting change? Start spreading "pro family, pro children" messages like the need for social help as millions become jobless as capital starts digesting itself in its current late-stage. You want to see plastics away? (No we're never seeing an end to cardboard, that's unrealistic to push for.) Then start advocating for Universal Basic Income and other measures that put control back in the hands of the people.
China did it, they limit the use of plastics in consumer products and have a standard for rigorous recycling and reuse
Glass soda bottles just hit different™ I would pay extra if it's an option
They do, but you're not supposed to hit people with them.
Glass is a verb isn't it? What else would you do with them.
average NCD Member lmao
Yes, but not the one I was initially thinking of. I am also British.
Here you can get them at most grocery stores. It's also usually the standard for German Brands, it's mostly Coca Cola Brands that are sold in Single-Use-Plastic
Not in Iran. Only some restaurants, mostly old school ones carry them now. They also take the bottle back, send it to the factory, where they are cleaned and filled again.
I've stopped drinking from plastic bottles completely. And glass bottled soda is so rare here that I buy it whenever I come across it.
Sadly my preferred brand of cider recently changed from glass bottles to plastic ones, so I'm looking around.
In case you didn't know, I think you might like to know: In Germany they also do reusable PET and reusable glass.
"reusable" in really big quotation marks
Nah, there are a lot of glass and plastic bottles that do get reused a couple of times. You can oftentimes even spot a characteristic ring of scratch marks from the machines that process, clean and refill the bottles.
Typical „Mehrwegflaschen“ are
There are multiple standardised types and sizes that are used by a multitude of brands. They are not recycled but reused. (Well, they do get recycled, once they are either broken or show heavy signs of use. The „Normbrunnenflasche“, the 0,7L standard bottle for water, for example, gets refilled about 100 times.)
And of course there is the „Pfand“ (deposit) system: Depending on the type of bottle, you usually pay a 8ct or 15ct deposit on the bottles. The system works pretty well.
Of course, there’s also a lot of one way bottles. Those usually have a 25ct deposit and are not reusable but get recycled instead. They’re usually also being brought back to the store, people want their 25ct back after all. (And yes, I know a lot of them aren’t actually recycled but end up at a landfill all the same).
And of course, there are also a lot of glass bottles that are not being reused and instead recycled by default like wine bottles or some non-standard types.
Really? Got a source on that? I know that we're still not that good in recycling plastics in general, But last time I checked the quota of PET recycling was quite high.
Thanks to the deposit-return system, recycling rates for PET bottles in Germany are indeed very high. Over 97% actually (which is quite awesome). Still leaves a few percent that aren’t, which is still a lot of plastic but we’re way above average.
In the USA for example, only about a third of PET bottles get actually recycled. The rest heads to the landfill or the burner.
For the yellow bag in Germany btw. (our trash system for plastic and compound packaging, tin cans, aluminium foil, etc.), the recycling rate is about two thirds in total.
I mean, they get collected, washed, and reused. Not sure why the sarcasm about it?
Well, here in California we've decided that most stores are mandated to provide "reusable" plastic shopping bags (at a cost of $0.10 each) which are more durable and made of a thicker plastic.
I don't know a single person that treats them as any less disposable than the thin plastic bags they replaced. There is little to no information or infrastructure supporting recycling them.
I'm just glad the stores around here give paper bags if you ask for them.
reusable plastic bags are perfect for small trash bags for little litter, the non reusable variant needs 2-3 to prevent leakage, paper just sucks.
Why do you mean? Am I missing some context? Or do you think I'm conflating recyclable with reusable?
They actually do have re-use programs where bottles are cleaned and refilled. Unfortunately they also have single use, that are only recycled, I'm not trying to hide that. But the re-use program seems good to me. I wish we had it in Switzerland.
https://www.nabu.de/umwelt-und-ressourcen/ressourcenschonung/einzelhandel-und-umwelt/mehrweg/nabumehrwegguide.html
Some PET bottles are reusable in Germany, and the scuff marks are a very clear sign some of these bottles have been used a good dozen times.
It's not all bottles though, many will be crushed and recycled (I hope).
I believe that glass is more of a solution than a problem. Compared to plastic, it is more durable, its production process has less impact on the environment and not to mention that in the case of beverages, returnable glass packaging is better in several aspects
There have been extensive studies on that topic, that showed that PET-bottles are more sustainable and environment friendly than glass bottles and have less impact on the environmdnt. Glass bottles use a lot more energy to produce and transport than PET bottles, and the oil you save by using PET instead of glass is more than enough to produce the PET you need. You also save sand, potash, limestone, soda and a ton of CO2.
If renewables would become the prime source of energy for glass production and transportation, this conclusion might change, and if the effects of microplastics and ocean pollution are considered it might change as well.
Regarding sources, there is an abundance of them in German and quite a few in English. I'll leave this one as an example.
Multi-use glass is were it's at. Producing glass is an energy intense process, the more you use it the bettet it gets. Single use glass packaging is a crime. (Same goes for plastics multi-use>single-use)