As we all know, glass bottles are definitely not environmentally ruinous
“Return to tradition” may be tempting to some, but it’s not an actual solution.
A study comparing the environmental impacts of various single-use beverage containers has concluded that glass bottles have a greater overall impact than plastic bottles
But… but… Glass is not single use. That is the whole point. I don’t like this article.
If you have single use bottles, aluminum like soda cans is lowest impact. But any reusable solution (meal, plastic, or glass) is much much better.
But… but… Glass is not single use.
When used for mass-produced beverages it very much is. Hell, plenty of beverages still use disposable glass bottles today, and that’s not even getting into the fact that glass bottles use to be the standard, which is part of the reason why there’s so much nostalgia around them.
In the same vein, plastic is not inherently single-use. If we’re comparing multi-use plastic and multi-use glass, then the same calculus applies.
But in the meme it’s the kind of milk bottle you return to the store for $ and they wash and refill it. Not really covered by that study I don’t think
glass bottles have a more damaging overall effect, largely because they are heavier and require more energy for their production.
It’s mostly just the us that no longer have recycling for bottles. Most modern countries have automated collection machines.
I’ve yet to see a reusable plastic milk bottle. The glass bottle pictured is literally one that you return to the store for a deposit and they return to the dairy, where it gets sterilised and reused. These are quite common where I live, and the plastic alternative is single-use “recyclable” plastic.
Hmm, if we’re saying everything is done with green energy, could plastic bottles be carbon negative? Make the plastic from algie or bean feed stock so that it acts as a form of carbon capture.
Makes sense to me, but there’s still the whole microplastics issue… But honestly, at this point, anything we can do to keep fossil fuels in the ground is a win in my book. I’d love to see us go down that path for plastic needs that are both necessary and supremely difficult to replace with other materials (like medical and laboratory applications), and stop using plasitic entirely for everything else.
Why are tetrapacks so good?
I assumed they were terrible as laminated paper can’t be recycled?
As I write this I start to think this might be one of those things I learned in high school that might be total BS.
Probably that ultimately even disposing of laminated paper is more environmentally friendly than the process of recycling energy-intensive materials like glass and plastic.
That’s because we didn’t move to nuclear like we should have 20-30 years ago+.
There’s no excuse to be burning coal or oil at this point, at least in first world countries that have the money.
We’re hitting issues with energy use because we didn’t take the upgrade path for our energy production that we were given because money.
Eat your boss (sexually), and pat your landlord on the head. Or whatever it is that doesn’t piss the .world mods off.
The way you’ve worded that suggested to me that there isn’t an actual solution so, for the people who didn’t click through, I’ll point out that the article concludes: “more sustainable alternatives to plastic bottles exist for all three types of beverage”.
That said, in order to compare the environmental impact, there has to be some kind of weighting between the energy cost of manufacture and the direct environmental pollution (discarded plastic choking marine animals; microplastics; etc). I’m not sure it even makes sense to try to combine them. Climate change is an imminent existential threat, whereas microplastics are poisoning us but not obviously killing us.
I also wonder what they assumed for the energy source in the glass manufacture. It is mostly fossil fuels at present, but the industry is moving towards electrification.
He’s literally offering you a direct rebuttal. Do you even know what the term “straw man” means?
A straw man argument is a fallacy where someone sets up and attacks a position that is not being debated.
Your meme DIRECTLY suggests a return to glass, and he literally offered up evidence that glass is not a solution because it’s actually more ruinous to the environment than plastics are.
I’m not sure this is a straw man, but I think it’s reasonable to argue that it could be considered one, given that the study talks about single-use glass whereas the meme is specifically showing a glass bottle that gets reused.
From the study itself:
Glass bottles, both virgin and recycled had high impacts compared to all other product systems, however thisdoes not consider the potential of reusing the glass bottles.
Given that page 56 shows that a brand new glass milk bottle is about 4x as impactful as their suggested alternative (carton) and a recycled one is about twice as impactful we can say that even using the lower bound of 20 mentioned in the study of reuses, the extra transport and cleaning would need to have at least 80% the impact of manufacturing a carton before reusable glass bottles could be considered worse than single-use cartons. Taking more optimistic values for glass (40 reuses of recycled glass), it’s more like 95%.
The study does mention how reuse of glass can reduce the impact:
The LCA by Mata and Costa, (2001) found that reused glass bottle schemes had far lower impacts in all tested impact categories scoped into that study, than non-re- turned glass systems. Whilst this study was undertaken under the former ISO standards, it still indicates that reuse of glass would be beneficial, especially when compared to single use glass bottles.
It talks about more complex logistics, but we have literally done this before and we still have communities that do this today. The logistics aren’t complex enough to make them unfeasible - we simply need to put in incentives that make it more profitable for businesses to include reuse in their logistics. One example of that would be a packaging waste tax. When sold by the manufacturer, a tax gets included that covers the cost of disposal of packaging. The company then gets a credit for each reuse.
Does it really? Or, do you only look at pictures when you “read.” See my recent response to PugJesus below. You commit the same logical fallacy. Sure, it’s (perhaps) a direct rebuttal to the pictures. But, the meme is more than that if you actually read the words. And, the words are the “argument.”
So, to answer your question: Yes. I understand logical fallacies well. PugJesus “sets up and attacks a position that is not being debated.”
Is that a “straw man” I smell?
Alright, I’m sure you can explain what the meme means and how it has absolutely nothing to do with an implication that glass bottles are less environmentally ruinous than plastic. By all means, I’m all ears.
The meme shows a reusable glass bottle (the same one I get my milk delivered in, actually). The study explicitly excludes reuse of the glass bottles and notes that they’ll generally get reused 20-40 times, reducing their impact.
The 1:1 comparison, at least where I live, is of single-use “recyclable” plastic to reusable glass bottles, which this study does not do.
The straw man to which OP is referring is the specific assumption that one is replacing single use plastic with single use glass, which is a much weaker statement than what my interpretation of OP’s meme was, which includes reusing the glass.
If OP had used a glass coke bottle (for which I can’t find the same evidence of reuse, and which do have much longer logistics chains, increasing the impact of the Glass’s weight), the interpretation of single use glass would be more reasonable.
The meme has to do with “ancient tech” vs. “progress.” The pictures could be “old internet” vs enshittified internet. Or, a calculator vs chatGPT. Or, old electric cars vs tech platforms with wheels.
The point being what we often call “progress” is in fact the opposite. You know, the “words” I “actually used” in the meme … vs. the straw man you created.
Theories abound as to why toddlers are more interested in things that “defy expectation.” The bouncier, the more attraction. The shinier, the more the attraction … etc. Marketers know this well and exploit it. We’re not logical — we knee jerk react instead actually thinking about the thing in front of us.
Like assuming, without really thinking about it, that this meme is about glass vs. plastic.
No. It’s about the title. Again, the words I “said.” Which were “The Human Condition.”
Thank you for providing a stunning exemplar of my point.
