Question about recycling

[oo 1]

If they're recycled, is it better to buy a glass or a plastic bottle (and why)?

[Ocean11 0]

> We use enough plastic wrap to wrap all of Texas every year (EPA)

 

Glass is better because it saves plastic that can be used for wrapping all of Texas (a good thing).

[Ocean11 0]

And now a helpful answer;

 

Misconception # 6: Using plastic containers conserves energy.

 

When the equation includes the energy used to synthesize the plastic resin, making plastic containers uses as much energy as making glass containers from virgin materials, and much more than making glass containers from recycled materials. Using refillables is most energy conservative.

 

Energy use studies that compare various packaging materials often do not account for the large amount of energy required to synthesize plastic resin. Most of the energy and environmental costs of plastics are hidden because they are incurred in the plastic factory. Also, life-cycle assessments often assume containers will be used only once. The practices of refilling and reuse, especially if carried out on the local level, have the greatest potential for reducing energy consumption no matter what material is used to make the containers.

 

From http://www.mindfully.org/Berkeley/Berkeley-Plastics-Task-Force.htm

 

The answer is to try to buy reusable glass bottles.

[sanjo 2]

Total energy required to produce a 500ml glass bottle and transport to shop about 34 megajoules. This is slightly more than the same for one made from PET, which takes about 32 megajoules.

 

BUT. The glass bottle made with 50% recycled glass has an energy cost of only 30MJ and the bottle itself can be recylcled, essentially indefinitely. Recycled plastic, however is almost never used to make more bottles (apparently) - due to hygeine concerns and partly because even a tiny bit of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) can irreparably contaminate a batch of recycled PET. So recycling plastic doesn't reduce the number of virgin plastic bottles made.

 

Plastic also releases many times more toxic gases into the atmosphere during manufacture than glass.

 

So - glass is better.

[me jane 0]

When I was living in Germany they had reusable plastic bottles (not PET). You washed them out and returned then to the crates in the shops just like the glass ones. When I asked about it I was told that each of these special plastic bottles was reused an average of about 6 times whereas each glass one an average of 10 times. The envirommental people in Germany after fatoring in enviromental damage from the transport & recycling processes determined that the reusable plastic bottles were more energy efficient.

 

Germany seemed to have the best recycling system of any country I've ever been to.

[bettyx 0]

while we're on the recycling/rubbish topic, how do i dispose of a battery ?

 

my rubbish is separated into plastic/combustible. so what do i do with an old AA battery?

[Thunderpants 0]

The Germans are smart people

They have implemented their "Grune punkte" law, which requires the manufactures of any product to pay for disposal of all the garbage their product produces. Japanese cookie producers would go bankrupt instantly if thay had to pay for 9x wrappingpaper, 3 plastic bags and a cardboard box for each cookie!

Denmark have by far the best system for beer and soda bottles, or used to have i should say.

every beer or soda sold goes into a standard glass bottle, which you pay a deposit of 2dkr (30yen).

needles to say that empty bottles does not lay around on the street. people can make money collecting bottles

each bottle is used 33!!! times on average.

BUT

The wise people down at EU headquarters thought that the bottle system was unfair to the foreign breweries who wanted to export to denmark, so now denmark is littered with aluminium cans.

..but we can get cheap foreign beers

[KlingKlang 1]

 Quote:

They have implemented their "Grune punkte" law, which requires the manufactures of any product to pay for disposal of all the garbage their product produces

Thats really interesting Thunderpants.... how does it work in practice?

[viv&kev 0]

How do you rate Japan for recycling? I think it's good the way the garbage is split up - I know back home and in the UK it isn't done like that... everything just put in together.