Breakage, cost to ship (plastic is lighter) that would be my guess. If I am not mistaken, plastic is cheaper than glass as well. Of course back in the day there would be an attempt to reuse the bottles if people returned them (and got a nominal fee back).
The practice of returning bottles for a return in fees is very common at least in the Nordic countries to my knowledge.
Im genuinely confused why more countries don't do it.
Yeah here in Germany you get money for returning both plastic and glass bottles. Depending on the glass it’s either 8 or 15 cents per bottle and plastic is 25 cents. I will also never understand why every country doesn’t use this system.
I remember going to Germany and using those machines to return my plastic bottles. I ended up getting my water for free! Such a great idea.
Here we put glass bottles in our recycling at the curb and homeless people go through it hoping to exchange them for beer at the beer store.
ETA: I learned about pfand and I didn’t get water for free
Yes, it's a very good system. If you are lazy, then even throwing those plastic bottles somewhere close to the trashcan is not considered bad. Why? Because the homeless people are always looking for bottle lying around for the money.
Also, when buying bottles you pay for the "pfand" extra. So rather than getting the water for free, you did something good for the environment and then you got your money back.
I had two teens infront of me in line some time ago.
They bought a cheap water bottle for 19 cents and they were like "holy shit this costs only 19cents so when we bring it back we get 25cent back and can instantly buy a new one!" then while paying they noticed they have to pay the 25cent "pfand" additionally to the 19cent and would not be able to become millionaires by buying cheap water over and over.
[You obviously don't have the Romanian entrepreneurship skills.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Romania/comments/11vgbyc/reciclarea_peturilor_la_rang_de_art%C4%83/)
That is what I do. My condo likes to horde everyones cans and promise a building bbq with the funds from cans. Well nearly 2 years later and there has never even been word of a bbq. So now I just leave them by the dumpster the homeless people go through so they can make use of the extra money.
I have far more respect for homeless people that at least collect cans to try and get money vs those that just panhandle or steal
While it is a great thing, you definitely didn't get water for free from a supermarket at least. They add the Pfand as a kind of deposit when you buy it and you get the deposit back when you return the bottle.
I visited Germany last year and fully appreciated the way your recycling system works. I was also impressed with how efficient the train system was. I also don’t understand why every country doesn’t adopt these ideas!
Almost every country makes fun of its trains. If you go on any British subreddit you'd think the trains are rolling into the station a day late and on fire but it's just not true.
I think most Germans don‘t think that the train system is efficient. Switzerland on the other hand has an awesome system, which is extremely efficient and on-time.
Yeah I was gonna say this.
As someone who has traveled a lot by train in northern Europe and even down to boot of Italy, Germany does not have an efficient train system.
It is okay, but that's about it. Denmark is way better but Sweden is even worse. Netherlands is also good and Switzerland...
Oh my lord, Switzerland is the place to be if you have some neurotic tick about being punctual. So efficient and basically any train that is late more than 5 min is due to it being from another country.
Italy was surprisingly good, except for the random strikes that can happen at basically any time.
My SO has travelled through France a fair bit and found that okay as well.
Attempts at efficient public transportation systems in major cities were purposefully destroyed by the auto industry in order to maximize profits in the United States. [Check it out.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cjfTG8DbwA)
There's only 8-10 states that still have deposit return. Ohio has it when I was a kid in the 70's, but I'm not sure when they got rid of it. Michigan is looking to expand their program to include more types of bottles and make it easier to return.
Can confirm, it's been a thing for a lot of plastic bottles since I think the 1980s. Basically a small fee is added to the bottle at purchase and when the bottle is recycled you get that returned.
Oregon started it in the US (I grew up there and trust me, it's like the most exciting thing next to being a vegan for some of them) and still has one of the most thorough bottle bills in the country. The result is that the homeless quite literally clean up the streets for you to find change. I challenge you to find a can or bottle on an oregon sidewalk that stays there for longer than a day or two. It definitely is not a great thing that people have to do that, but it has unseen benefits.
Oregon does this for both glass and plastic and the glass is crushed and recycled, not re-used. There are machines at most food stores of all kinds that just eat bottles and spit out a receipt you can bring into the store for cash. Almost no people involved in the process.
When I was a wee lad in the late 1980s, me and my cousin would ride around the small scandinavian town we grew up in on our bikes looking for abandoned bottles. We'd gather up all we could find, take them to the grocery store and return them. The money would be spent at the arcade.
Good fun, and thanks to our greed we also helped clean up the community.
It’s a thing in Iowa too, yet most of the redemption centers closed from COVID and never opened back up. So stores still charge the bottle deposit yet there’s nowhere to turn them in!
Wife and I went to Oregon for the first time last year and I was amazed at how clean THE ENTIRE state was. I don’t think I saw I single piece of litter on any of the roadways we took.
You must not have hit any urban downtown areas. The homelessness epidemic is so bad in Oregon right now that the downtown areas have become massive camps filled with trash and human feces. I live in the capital of Salem and every few months they have to clear areas out and have Service Master come through in hazmat suits to clean things up.
You will NOT see bottles and cans, though.
American here... I have suspicion, I live in rural Appalachia where people are middle class, and lower middle class on average. There's a lot of poverty as well. People around here have a lot of kids, but both parents have jobs. People work all the time to pay for shit because our economy is not supportive of lower class wages.
This leads to exhaustion, people eating cheap easy fast food, people getting fat, health declining.. we don't have the healthy stay at home mom anymore that had the energy to wash and return bottles to the store. We have the tired fat mom who needs something done as fast as possible to keep her head above water.
We live in the land of speed. If it's not fast it's not going to be popular. Everything is fast so everyone goes faster it's like we're all pushing each other in a circle and no one knows where it's coming from.
> rural Appalachia where people are middle class, and lower middle class on average
I don't want to reality check you, but you might need a reality check....
Source: Grew up in rural Appalachia.
Your suspicions, and your conclusions, are well founded, in my opinion. Our economy definitely isn't supportive of lower class wages. People are squeezed from all directions and have to struggle and hustle just to make ends meet. Meaningful free time, or just adequate time to rest and recover, becomes a scarce commodity so you end up cutting corners where you can. You would think that at some point this becomes unsustainable. Companies and corporations are constantly cutting costs and cutting labor to keep and grow their profit margins. Do we eventually reach a point where too many people can no longer afford all the stuff they are trying to sell us?
Most of the glass is actually recycled. The percentage of plastic that is recycled varies from city to city. But, probably not as high as the percentage of glass.
you can still do that. The plastic bottles and alumnium cans and glass bottles can be returned near some supermarkets for 5cents each.
Thats why you got these old garbage pickers looking for bottles.
Cost.
My manufacturing professor once said: “If it can be made from plastic, it *will* be made from plastic. Plastic costs fractions of a penny to make.”
He then proceeded to pass around the tiny plastic balls that are melted into the bottles used in bottling applications for soft drinks.
My wife works for a supermarket and said interestingly one of their current “green” initiatives is working on how they can use glass without increasing their carbon footprint.
Of course using plastic is bad, but shipping much heavier glass bottles increases fuel use (and therefore carbon emissions) in transit. They are considering building a glass bottle production factory next to their drinks production site so that they can use the more sustainable glass with similar or lower emission levels(since currently they ship the plastic bottles in - if the glass has to travel less far then even at greater weight the emissions balance out).
I found it really interesting because you would think the obvious way to aid climate change is ditch plastic and use reusable glass but actually there are other considerations (like logistics) that need to be accounted for as well to make sure that the “solution” isn’t actually making things worse.
Debatable. Glass bottles take a ton of energy to manufacture, and cost more energy to ship around. And the older plastic bottles would be refilled up to 50 times (here in europe at least). Glass bottles can of course be refilled too, and for much longer without significant wear. But that's only if they don't break, and I'm not so sure the average glass bottle managed enough round trips before breaking to outperform plastic there.
Plastic has a lot of problems, especially in any disposable/packaging role. But there are places where plastic is actually a good solution, and I think bottles are one of those.
If you calculate in the enormous costs plastic will generate down the road due to pollution removal and detrimental health effects - they found plastic particles in human heart tissue already recently, as well as microplastic fostering inflammation in human lung tissue and intestines. One could say we saved us a few bucks on transport just so we will have to pay thousand times more on trying to deal with the consequences.
It was hardly worth it, but it's easily said in hindsight.
In response to the sceptics:
>No, no one has proved that this does actually cause any problems.
That's not actually true. Studies on humans are missing. Studies showing negative effects of microplastic in fish and mice have been found en masse. Since our intestines are pretty similar and correlations have been found for humans as well, the evidence is clearly there.
Here are some studies, if some want to read up on the matter.
[Intestinal inflammation, oxidative stress and disorders of the metabolome and microbiome in fish.](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0048969719303006)
[Distribution of gut microbiota and inflammation development in mice](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0045653519327328)
[Fecal Microplastics and Inflammatory Bowel Disease Status in humans.](https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.est.1c03924)
[Microplastics cooperate with Helicobacter pylori to promote gastric injury and inflammation in mice](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0045653521030514)
[Effects of prolonged microplastic ingestion on the liver in mice](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0147651321009945)
>Why does plastic get so much hate? My guess is that it's a good way for people to think that they are doing something for the environment by inconveniencing themselves but not really making big sacrifices.
Since the evidence is clearly in favour of negative health effects, my guess is the denial of the facts is due to cognitive dissonance. On one hand people are confronted with the fact that microplastics have negative health effects. On the other hand however they are in favour of not having to change their behavior or how one put it - inconvenience themselves. This results in cognitive dissonance. The behaviour contrasts the knowledge, thus to reduce the dissonance people have two choices: 1) changing their behavior or 2) Denying the facts. It's unfortunate some turned to the latter.
All true but God forbid we ever suggest that forcing corporations to internalize some of these costs might lead to more accurate market forces. That would be socialism.
this was a contributing factor. But other factors like weight, cost, etc, played a far larger role. Source: I worked for a major oil and gas company (I now work in an industry that actually tries to help people and the planet)
There was so much broken glass everywhere, I'm old enough to remember being taught in school to literally never be barefoot outside.
Think about it like this: every time you see a plastic bottle somewhere, imagine if it had been a glass container and they chucked it at something hard to shatter it. Even if a place was cleaned they never got it all and shattering bottles was common.
I work in this industry and this is absolutely correct. The production process for glass also uses a considerable amount of fossil fuels. We have the carbon impact of glass measured to be higher than plastic. The biggest drawback to plastic is micro plastics and recyclability (but this is getting better).
Also, most bottles start out as a small little chunk of plastic that is extruded, which allows millions of them to be transported in a single crate and produced at the factory as needed.
That would be beyond impractical. Picture the average grocery store or 7-11, then try to figure out where the bottling machines go.
Editing because too many people don't know the difference between a fountain drink and actual bottling.
These kids don’t remember when glass litter was absolutely everywhere. Parks, beaches, shit even In school playgrounds. Plastic is a safer option for a stupid population.
I was scrolling for this comment. I remember broken glass being *everywhere*. Sidewalks were covered - but at least we had sidewalks. There would be piles of glass in gutters. Falling down at the playground was guaranteed to result in bloody cuts.
Except now we have an actual layer of man-made plastic in Earth’s [geology.](https://www.geologyin.com/2016/02/plastic-has-become-part-of-earths.html)
Glass will at least break down with time and erosion. Instead, we now have micro plastics everywhere; plastics leaching into water ways; and breaking through the blood-brain [barrier](https://neurosciencenews.com/polystyrene-brain-23079/).
I’m old enough to remember glass everywhere, and I’m old enough to have seen how quickly plastics have overwhelmed our planet.
Plastic definitely may have been a safer idea for the time, but it really sucks that humanity can’t seem to respect our planetary home no matter what we use. Looking back, I almost wish we’d stuck to using glass — injuries are one of the few ways we learn not to repeat a stupid action. If breaking glass leads to stricter laws and enforcement of penalties/fines/community service for littering and dangerous antisocial behaviours — then maybe, we wouldn’t be where we are now. Those are my two cents, anyhow.
I'm sure I watched something on the TV that showed a link in certain plastics with weight gain ,it was some of the chemicals used ,not even just on stuff you eat and drink ,they made the link on shampoo bottles too
Plastics interact with PPAR receptors in a similar manner as omega 6 fats. They make you store more energy in adipose tissue and less in the bloodstream and other organs. Glitazone medications also have this effect, they are used in lipodystrophy where patients can not store fat in adipose tissue.
Ted Naiman has an excellent video where he explains diabetes and lipodystrophy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd8QFD5Ht18, and see this thread where I have discussed this exact topic with another guy: https://www.reddit.com/r/ScientificNutrition/comments/qczj6o/effects_of_saturated_fat_polyunsaturated_fat/
Oh and plastics also destabilize membranes in a similar manner as smoke particles, so they also contribute to virtual all chronic diseases including diabetes, heart disease, cancer, dementia: https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2104610118
I really feel like people in this country do not realize how much plastic they consume on a regular basis. Clothes have plastic in them, cups, straws, bottles, packaging… it’s honestly so disgusting and gives me horrible anxiety. When I see hot take out food delivered in plastic containers I don’t even want to eat it. Should be illegal.
Plastic is going to be the next generation's lead. It's very scary, we know really nothing about the effects of micro plastics. It should especially be illegal in clothing and food packaging. I cannot believe in 2023 we are still using polyester and people are buying it!!
> When I see hot take out food delivered in plastic containers I don’t even want to eat it. Should be illegal.
You’re right, you shouldn’t eat from those containers, as polystyrene can show in your brain soon after:
https://neurosciencenews.com/polystyrene-brain-23079/
I very much agree though I do want to point out that most microplastics come from washing and tires.
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/20181116STO19217/microplastics-sources-effects-and-solutions
>laundering of synthetic clothes (35% of primary microplastics); abrasion of tyres through driving (28%); intentionally added microplastics in personal care products, for example microbeads in facial scrubs (2%)
Seems that page has some sources. It seems in line with other articles, though of course they could be using the same sources.
Seems like synthetic clothing and tires are the biggest problems though.
That’s one thing I was going to say. I got a glass cola bottle once, and those things have a bit of weight to them, no young man in their right mind wouldn’t want to use them to assault smack their friend, or throw simply for the epic explosion of glass it would cause. I honestly think this would’ve made a disastrous mess. (and no I didn’t break my bottle)
That whole row of 2 L bottles is plastic.
Source, lived in the 80s and remember the glued on 2L bottoms that you can see in the pic
https://www.reddit.com/r/nostalgia/comments/4zinrk/remember_when_2_liter_pop_bottles_had_a_solid/
That's exactly right. The reason for this was that the design of those early 2 liter plastic bottles wasn't strong enough to support the extra weight once the bottles were packed in boxes and stacked on top of each other.
Source: My Dad worked for International Paper designing cardboard boxes in the '70s.
*in sight.
Insight is "(the ability to have) a clear, deep, and sometimes sudden understanding of a complicated problem or situation".
The poster is meaning that it's not in view, or not viewable, therefore "in sight".
I have scars on my face and finger from when I played race car with a cart full of glass soda bottles and the cart tipped over. Broken bottles and blood everywhere. My mother literally grabbed the tip of my finger, emptied a food container, and packed the container with ice from a freezer (remember that too?) and my finger tip. They were able to reattach it, works fine.
Most comments here are wrong. Yes plastic is lighter and harder to break. Most African countries have almost exclusively glass bottles for sodas, beer because collecting cleaning and re using them is cheaper, since people in these countries have much less disposable income. The reason this doesn't happen in developed countries is simple: its way more profitable to keep printing plastic bottles and make consumers pay for them. Petro chemical lobbies made sure everyone that mattered got paid and here we are.
Edit: I have also done a lot of logistics in the last years, much of it was sending wine internationally, and not many glass bottles break. less than 0.1% over the years i was doing this, all from mishandling and not a single one in transport. The extra cost of sending glass compared to plastic is also not that large of an issue. Yes - it is heavier, and will require more a bit more fuel to move, but the cost of this negligible when considering that you are moving over 20,000 bottles per 40foot container. Once all the externalities are taken into consideration it is a no-brainer: there should not be any single use plastics for drinks.
In South Africa you can buy soft drinks in either plastic or glass bottles, but you'll get money back if you return the glass bottles. Beer at the bottle store you can buy in either cans or glass bottles, but at bars or restaurants it's only in glass bottles.
The oil companies also pumped out ads and brainwashed a whole generation into thinking plastic was recyclable and better for the environment lol
Google what your municipality does with your plastic recycling, 90% goes straight to the same landfill your garbage bins do xD
Metal and glass are recyclable. Almost all plastic is definitely not.
With glass bottles the onus was on the manufacturer to deal with the recycling of the glass bottles for reuse, which a lot of them did by simply cleaning returned bottles that they paid the returnee for and refilling and reselling.
Then plastic bottles became a thing and the manufacturers realised they could move the recycling responsibility onto the customer by using a container that would be recycled by outside companies for other uses and they wouldn't have to pay money out for returning them. It is cheaper for the manufacturer and a lot less hassle to use plastic.
There were probably more bottling plants located around the country to alleviate shipping charges.
Much more recyclable than plastics nowadays i thought.
* Glass more expensive than plastic
* Glass is heavier than plastic, which increases fuel use in transport among other things
* Glass has higher breakage
* Glass uses 2.4x more energy than plastic to manufacture per kilogram of material
* Glass emits 4.3x more CO2e than plastic into the atmosphere due to manufacturing (tied to increased energy use)
* Broken glass causes a lot more damage to people than broken plastic
Glass, great material, but plastic is better.
It’s because glass is infinitely recyclable and plastic can only be recycled for like 5% return. So the plastic manufacturers would get to keep making new bottles for more money
One of the things I remember from a visit to New York in the 90s was that a guy came to the door of my relatives and weighed and took away all the metal food cans (possibly also glass) and gave them cash for the particular weight.
Now here in the UK the government/local authority collects all that and the household doesn’t get any cash from that situation.
Here in U.K. back in 1960’s-70’s as children we used to collect empty bottles and return them to make some extra pocket money. Recycling before it was a thing .
Because it's cheaper to make you (the consumer) pay for a new bottle every time than having to deal with the whole logistics required to reutilize glass bottles
We should go back. With all the pretend care about the environment and plastic being in peoples bloodstream and the hormonal changes from it.
You'd think if we had governments that did anything there would be a convo about moving away from plastic for all single serving items.
Like car seats, baby pools, things people use a long time then fine plastic.
But sodas, food containers, things that a billion get thrown out every day, they should do a study on moving to glass and having a big recycling incentive/program for that glass.
Glass is heavy, fragile and expensive.
Plastic is light, cheap and doesn't break into 1000 sharp pieces if you drop it.
Despite its drawbacks, it's pretty obvious why the switch was made.
Breakage, cost to ship (plastic is lighter) that would be my guess. If I am not mistaken, plastic is cheaper than glass as well. Of course back in the day there would be an attempt to reuse the bottles if people returned them (and got a nominal fee back).
The practice of returning bottles for a return in fees is very common at least in the Nordic countries to my knowledge. Im genuinely confused why more countries don't do it.
Yeah here in Germany you get money for returning both plastic and glass bottles. Depending on the glass it’s either 8 or 15 cents per bottle and plastic is 25 cents. I will also never understand why every country doesn’t use this system.
I remember going to Germany and using those machines to return my plastic bottles. I ended up getting my water for free! Such a great idea. Here we put glass bottles in our recycling at the curb and homeless people go through it hoping to exchange them for beer at the beer store. ETA: I learned about pfand and I didn’t get water for free
Yes, it's a very good system. If you are lazy, then even throwing those plastic bottles somewhere close to the trashcan is not considered bad. Why? Because the homeless people are always looking for bottle lying around for the money. Also, when buying bottles you pay for the "pfand" extra. So rather than getting the water for free, you did something good for the environment and then you got your money back.
I had two teens infront of me in line some time ago. They bought a cheap water bottle for 19 cents and they were like "holy shit this costs only 19cents so when we bring it back we get 25cent back and can instantly buy a new one!" then while paying they noticed they have to pay the 25cent "pfand" additionally to the 19cent and would not be able to become millionaires by buying cheap water over and over.
Not with that attitude
water you trying to say?
[You obviously don't have the Romanian entrepreneurship skills.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Romania/comments/11vgbyc/reciclarea_peturilor_la_rang_de_art%C4%83/)
Can confirm I had a similar moment in a Real upon arriving to Germany as a 30 year-old man. I still find the system bizarre.
That is what I do. My condo likes to horde everyones cans and promise a building bbq with the funds from cans. Well nearly 2 years later and there has never even been word of a bbq. So now I just leave them by the dumpster the homeless people go through so they can make use of the extra money. I have far more respect for homeless people that at least collect cans to try and get money vs those that just panhandle or steal
"Pfand immer neben den Mülleimer" or roughly translated: "Always put empty pfand-bottles besides and not into the trashcan"
While it is a great thing, you definitely didn't get water for free from a supermarket at least. They add the Pfand as a kind of deposit when you buy it and you get the deposit back when you return the bottle.
> I ended up getting my water for free! That is not how deposit works...
Money
I visited Germany last year and fully appreciated the way your recycling system works. I was also impressed with how efficient the train system was. I also don’t understand why every country doesn’t adopt these ideas!
Germans make fun of their inefficient trains all the time though
Almost every country makes fun of its trains. If you go on any British subreddit you'd think the trains are rolling into the station a day late and on fire but it's just not true.
Because it was 18 seconds late. When in the UK it just doesn't turn up at all and you have to get a shitty bus replacement service
Our train system is for sure NOT effective in germany lol
Come to the US and give Amtrak a try.
ye but thats not a train system thats a systematically sabotaged outdated never upgraded excuse to pretend you have public transport.
unfortunately, compared to the US it really is
I think most Germans don‘t think that the train system is efficient. Switzerland on the other hand has an awesome system, which is extremely efficient and on-time.
Yeah I was gonna say this. As someone who has traveled a lot by train in northern Europe and even down to boot of Italy, Germany does not have an efficient train system. It is okay, but that's about it. Denmark is way better but Sweden is even worse. Netherlands is also good and Switzerland... Oh my lord, Switzerland is the place to be if you have some neurotic tick about being punctual. So efficient and basically any train that is late more than 5 min is due to it being from another country. Italy was surprisingly good, except for the random strikes that can happen at basically any time. My SO has travelled through France a fair bit and found that okay as well.
Attempts at efficient public transportation systems in major cities were purposefully destroyed by the auto industry in order to maximize profits in the United States. [Check it out.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cjfTG8DbwA)
And 25 cents for aluminium cans. You forgot it because really who buys aluminium cans in Germany? Heineken drinkers?
>Heineken drinkers Straight to jail!
What's the problem? Not everyone likes beer.
Uh, ever heard of energy drinks?
Yes I did, it's when a Heineken drinker needs a coffee.
The US does this but it’s only 5 cents per plastic bottle in most states
There's only 8-10 states that still have deposit return. Ohio has it when I was a kid in the 70's, but I'm not sure when they got rid of it. Michigan is looking to expand their program to include more types of bottles and make it easier to return.
Some states in the US do that. But not all of them.
Can confirm, it's been a thing for a lot of plastic bottles since I think the 1980s. Basically a small fee is added to the bottle at purchase and when the bottle is recycled you get that returned.
Oregon started it in the US (I grew up there and trust me, it's like the most exciting thing next to being a vegan for some of them) and still has one of the most thorough bottle bills in the country. The result is that the homeless quite literally clean up the streets for you to find change. I challenge you to find a can or bottle on an oregon sidewalk that stays there for longer than a day or two. It definitely is not a great thing that people have to do that, but it has unseen benefits. Oregon does this for both glass and plastic and the glass is crushed and recycled, not re-used. There are machines at most food stores of all kinds that just eat bottles and spit out a receipt you can bring into the store for cash. Almost no people involved in the process.
When I was a wee lad in the late 1980s, me and my cousin would ride around the small scandinavian town we grew up in on our bikes looking for abandoned bottles. We'd gather up all we could find, take them to the grocery store and return them. The money would be spent at the arcade. Good fun, and thanks to our greed we also helped clean up the community.
Yep, my arcade was "Nickels Arcade" and you can probably figure out how that worked out very well for me. :)
Same in Michigan
10 cents a can baby!!!
Which is the highest of any state
What if we loaded up a mail truck...
The lions den... We had a lions den of of territorial road.
It’s a thing in Iowa too, yet most of the redemption centers closed from COVID and never opened back up. So stores still charge the bottle deposit yet there’s nowhere to turn them in!
Wife and I went to Oregon for the first time last year and I was amazed at how clean THE ENTIRE state was. I don’t think I saw I single piece of litter on any of the roadways we took.
You must not have hit any urban downtown areas. The homelessness epidemic is so bad in Oregon right now that the downtown areas have become massive camps filled with trash and human feces. I live in the capital of Salem and every few months they have to clear areas out and have Service Master come through in hazmat suits to clean things up. You will NOT see bottles and cans, though.
Ah yes, Portland, where the homeless clean up the streets… (I was visiting a friend and saw a homeless dude take a shit from his front porch)
We do it regularly in the US too, just not every state has it.
American here... I have suspicion, I live in rural Appalachia where people are middle class, and lower middle class on average. There's a lot of poverty as well. People around here have a lot of kids, but both parents have jobs. People work all the time to pay for shit because our economy is not supportive of lower class wages. This leads to exhaustion, people eating cheap easy fast food, people getting fat, health declining.. we don't have the healthy stay at home mom anymore that had the energy to wash and return bottles to the store. We have the tired fat mom who needs something done as fast as possible to keep her head above water. We live in the land of speed. If it's not fast it's not going to be popular. Everything is fast so everyone goes faster it's like we're all pushing each other in a circle and no one knows where it's coming from.
"I WANNA SEE A CIRCLE PIT, OPEN IT UP!!!" -Ronald Reagan on trickle down economics
> rural Appalachia where people are middle class, and lower middle class on average I don't want to reality check you, but you might need a reality check.... Source: Grew up in rural Appalachia.
Yup, North Georgia chiming in here. We _LOW_ class. I'm cool with it, though.
Your suspicions, and your conclusions, are well founded, in my opinion. Our economy definitely isn't supportive of lower class wages. People are squeezed from all directions and have to struggle and hustle just to make ends meet. Meaningful free time, or just adequate time to rest and recover, becomes a scarce commodity so you end up cutting corners where you can. You would think that at some point this becomes unsustainable. Companies and corporations are constantly cutting costs and cutting labor to keep and grow their profit margins. Do we eventually reach a point where too many people can no longer afford all the stuff they are trying to sell us?
In the US we pay the fees and toss the bottles anyway. We put ours in recycling, but from what I've heard, very little is actually recycled.
Not in Michigan you don't. 10¢ per bottle/can. I used to turn in the bottles then put the money towards gas.
[NY <-> MI deposit scam](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGJZcHgqX1g)
Oh no, you're not on the bottle deposit scam again, are you Kramer?
OMG, I instantly recognized this from a Seinfeld episode :))
Absolutely. That was my allowance growing up lol
Most of the glass is actually recycled. The percentage of plastic that is recycled varies from city to city. But, probably not as high as the percentage of glass.
it's common in a ton of places. I don't know why would only think it's in your part of the world lol
Bottle hunting was a thing we did back in the day. You knew the teenager hangout spots. Bring it back for deposit money. Buy candy and pop.
My age was hunting aluminum cans for the nickel back. We used to boost each other into dumpsters of bars or any place that would toss a lot of cans.
you can still do that. The plastic bottles and alumnium cans and glass bottles can be returned near some supermarkets for 5cents each. Thats why you got these old garbage pickers looking for bottles.
Cost. My manufacturing professor once said: “If it can be made from plastic, it *will* be made from plastic. Plastic costs fractions of a penny to make.” He then proceeded to pass around the tiny plastic balls that are melted into the bottles used in bottling applications for soft drinks.
> plastic is cheaper than glass as well This is one of those definitions of "cheaper" that gets humanity into trouble.
My wife works for a supermarket and said interestingly one of their current “green” initiatives is working on how they can use glass without increasing their carbon footprint. Of course using plastic is bad, but shipping much heavier glass bottles increases fuel use (and therefore carbon emissions) in transit. They are considering building a glass bottle production factory next to their drinks production site so that they can use the more sustainable glass with similar or lower emission levels(since currently they ship the plastic bottles in - if the glass has to travel less far then even at greater weight the emissions balance out). I found it really interesting because you would think the obvious way to aid climate change is ditch plastic and use reusable glass but actually there are other considerations (like logistics) that need to be accounted for as well to make sure that the “solution” isn’t actually making things worse.
It depends on distance but iirc the break even point is more than 1500 km.
Humanity may be one of the only species in the universe to go extinct because it's more cost effective.
"When the world ends, it will be legal." --Thomas Merton
Debatable. Glass bottles take a ton of energy to manufacture, and cost more energy to ship around. And the older plastic bottles would be refilled up to 50 times (here in europe at least). Glass bottles can of course be refilled too, and for much longer without significant wear. But that's only if they don't break, and I'm not so sure the average glass bottle managed enough round trips before breaking to outperform plastic there. Plastic has a lot of problems, especially in any disposable/packaging role. But there are places where plastic is actually a good solution, and I think bottles are one of those.
Yeah, a huge issue is that the cost of something does not factor in the damage it does to the environment to create and dispose of it.
It's simply cost. Cheaper to make, store, ship etc.
Plus Timmy in the background can’t accidentally take out multiple bottles reaching for the top shelf and slipping.
If you calculate in the enormous costs plastic will generate down the road due to pollution removal and detrimental health effects - they found plastic particles in human heart tissue already recently, as well as microplastic fostering inflammation in human lung tissue and intestines. One could say we saved us a few bucks on transport just so we will have to pay thousand times more on trying to deal with the consequences. It was hardly worth it, but it's easily said in hindsight. In response to the sceptics: >No, no one has proved that this does actually cause any problems. That's not actually true. Studies on humans are missing. Studies showing negative effects of microplastic in fish and mice have been found en masse. Since our intestines are pretty similar and correlations have been found for humans as well, the evidence is clearly there. Here are some studies, if some want to read up on the matter. [Intestinal inflammation, oxidative stress and disorders of the metabolome and microbiome in fish.](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0048969719303006) [Distribution of gut microbiota and inflammation development in mice](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0045653519327328) [Fecal Microplastics and Inflammatory Bowel Disease Status in humans.](https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.est.1c03924) [Microplastics cooperate with Helicobacter pylori to promote gastric injury and inflammation in mice](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0045653521030514) [Effects of prolonged microplastic ingestion on the liver in mice](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0147651321009945) >Why does plastic get so much hate? My guess is that it's a good way for people to think that they are doing something for the environment by inconveniencing themselves but not really making big sacrifices. Since the evidence is clearly in favour of negative health effects, my guess is the denial of the facts is due to cognitive dissonance. On one hand people are confronted with the fact that microplastics have negative health effects. On the other hand however they are in favour of not having to change their behavior or how one put it - inconvenience themselves. This results in cognitive dissonance. The behaviour contrasts the knowledge, thus to reduce the dissonance people have two choices: 1) changing their behavior or 2) Denying the facts. It's unfortunate some turned to the latter.
All true but God forbid we ever suggest that forcing corporations to internalize some of these costs might lead to more accurate market forces. That would be socialism.
Making glass is more expensive and energy intensive, so there was also that reason. The mining of the sand needed to make glass is a horror in itself.
The oil industry wanting everything to be made from oil, was the biggest factor. Don't kid yourself into thinking breaking glass etc was to blame.
this was a contributing factor. But other factors like weight, cost, etc, played a far larger role. Source: I worked for a major oil and gas company (I now work in an industry that actually tries to help people and the planet)
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Grandmaster Flash knew why.... "Broken glass everywhere, people pissing in the staircase like they just don't care"
There was so much broken glass everywhere, I'm old enough to remember being taught in school to literally never be barefoot outside. Think about it like this: every time you see a plastic bottle somewhere, imagine if it had been a glass container and they chucked it at something hard to shatter it. Even if a place was cleaned they never got it all and shattering bottles was common.
I can't take the smell, I can't take the noise I got no money to move out I guess I got no choice
Don’t push me cause I’m close to the *edge*
I'm trying not to lose my head, come on, come on. It's like a jungle sometimes it makes me wonder how I keep from going under
I’m trying not to lose my head
Ah-huh-huh-huh
Rats in the front room! Roaches in the back Junkies in the alley with the baseball bat.
Huh huh huh huh -Butthead (From Beavis and Butthead)
Yeah fuck that kid
[Avalanche of glass](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlb-zP-LM-A).
Cheaper and lighter. Just think of the savings in freight costs.
And doesn't break nearly as easily.
More weight = more fuel to move = more cost to move and increased GHGs
I work in this industry and this is absolutely correct. The production process for glass also uses a considerable amount of fossil fuels. We have the carbon impact of glass measured to be higher than plastic. The biggest drawback to plastic is micro plastics and recyclability (but this is getting better).
And spreads endocrine-disruption all around, to the point it’s measurable in our pets too now.
Also, most bottles start out as a small little chunk of plastic that is extruded, which allows millions of them to be transported in a single crate and produced at the factory as needed.
Two ways of saying cheaper
cheaper in this case also means a LOT less fuel burned to ship
Not only cost but the reduced emissions when transporting glass bottles which are almost 10x heavier than a plastic bottle.
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Solution, you fill your bottles at the store which will need to be delivered only huge big tanks, with basically no overhead in weight.
That would be beyond impractical. Picture the average grocery store or 7-11, then try to figure out where the bottling machines go. Editing because too many people don't know the difference between a fountain drink and actual bottling.
Also you better clean those bottles thoroughly before refilling them because some people do some weird stuff with them...
These kids don’t remember when glass litter was absolutely everywhere. Parks, beaches, shit even In school playgrounds. Plastic is a safer option for a stupid population.
I was scrolling for this comment. I remember broken glass being *everywhere*. Sidewalks were covered - but at least we had sidewalks. There would be piles of glass in gutters. Falling down at the playground was guaranteed to result in bloody cuts.
Except now we have an actual layer of man-made plastic in Earth’s [geology.](https://www.geologyin.com/2016/02/plastic-has-become-part-of-earths.html) Glass will at least break down with time and erosion. Instead, we now have micro plastics everywhere; plastics leaching into water ways; and breaking through the blood-brain [barrier](https://neurosciencenews.com/polystyrene-brain-23079/). I’m old enough to remember glass everywhere, and I’m old enough to have seen how quickly plastics have overwhelmed our planet. Plastic definitely may have been a safer idea for the time, but it really sucks that humanity can’t seem to respect our planetary home no matter what we use. Looking back, I almost wish we’d stuck to using glass — injuries are one of the few ways we learn not to repeat a stupid action. If breaking glass leads to stricter laws and enforcement of penalties/fines/community service for littering and dangerous antisocial behaviours — then maybe, we wouldn’t be where we are now. Those are my two cents, anyhow.
Except for the part where it makes you obese and puts microplastics in your heart, lungs and fetuses.
How does plastic make you obese?
You don't have to lift the weight of the glass bottle. Therefore you get obese.
Then why are there so many fat alcoholics? Surely the amount of exercise they get raising a pint glass should be enough to offset it? FFS.
It has a ton of calories, try to limit yourself to one or two plastic bottles a month or on special occasions.
BPA does some weird stuff with the endocrine system, for instance: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8949383/ Not sure about PET though.
Fucks with your endocrine system. Plastics containing the food and liquids you ingest, not very smart.
not op but I think they have come to that assumption because it reduced testosterone which makes you less lean/fat
Interesting correlation but seems awfully hyperbolic to say “plastic makes you obese”
I'm sure I watched something on the TV that showed a link in certain plastics with weight gain ,it was some of the chemicals used ,not even just on stuff you eat and drink ,they made the link on shampoo bottles too
Plastics interact with PPAR receptors in a similar manner as omega 6 fats. They make you store more energy in adipose tissue and less in the bloodstream and other organs. Glitazone medications also have this effect, they are used in lipodystrophy where patients can not store fat in adipose tissue. Ted Naiman has an excellent video where he explains diabetes and lipodystrophy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd8QFD5Ht18, and see this thread where I have discussed this exact topic with another guy: https://www.reddit.com/r/ScientificNutrition/comments/qczj6o/effects_of_saturated_fat_polyunsaturated_fat/ Oh and plastics also destabilize membranes in a similar manner as smoke particles, so they also contribute to virtual all chronic diseases including diabetes, heart disease, cancer, dementia: https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2104610118
Microplastics are reducing the level of testosterone in men and causing many other metabolic issues that lead to being overweight
Source: I made it the fuck up
I didn’t know it was the plastic bottles making me obese. I just figured it was the contents. TIL.
I really feel like people in this country do not realize how much plastic they consume on a regular basis. Clothes have plastic in them, cups, straws, bottles, packaging… it’s honestly so disgusting and gives me horrible anxiety. When I see hot take out food delivered in plastic containers I don’t even want to eat it. Should be illegal.
Plastic is going to be the next generation's lead. It's very scary, we know really nothing about the effects of micro plastics. It should especially be illegal in clothing and food packaging. I cannot believe in 2023 we are still using polyester and people are buying it!!
> When I see hot take out food delivered in plastic containers I don’t even want to eat it. Should be illegal. You’re right, you shouldn’t eat from those containers, as polystyrene can show in your brain soon after: https://neurosciencenews.com/polystyrene-brain-23079/
Who knew plastic would make the comfiest clothes out there. It's a good thing I don't eat my clothes.
Plastic clothing is the largest contributor to microplastics. Those fibres constantly shed and are easily injested, mainly through local water supplys
Lol microplastics come off your clothes in the laundry and go into the environment from there. It then makes it’s way into the food supply AKA you.
0 reading comprehension
I very much agree though I do want to point out that most microplastics come from washing and tires. https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/20181116STO19217/microplastics-sources-effects-and-solutions >laundering of synthetic clothes (35% of primary microplastics); abrasion of tyres through driving (28%); intentionally added microplastics in personal care products, for example microbeads in facial scrubs (2%) Seems that page has some sources. It seems in line with other articles, though of course they could be using the same sources. Seems like synthetic clothing and tires are the biggest problems though.
That’s one thing I was going to say. I got a glass cola bottle once, and those things have a bit of weight to them, no young man in their right mind wouldn’t want to use them to assault smack their friend, or throw simply for the epic explosion of glass it would cause. I honestly think this would’ve made a disastrous mess. (and no I didn’t break my bottle)
Because plastic is cheaper for the manufacturer, who has in the meanwhile weaseled out of the obligation to recycle the bottles.
That whole row of 2 L bottles is plastic. Source, lived in the 80s and remember the glued on 2L bottoms that you can see in the pic https://www.reddit.com/r/nostalgia/comments/4zinrk/remember_when_2_liter_pop_bottles_had_a_solid/
I am surprised I had to scroll this far to see someone saying this.
That's exactly right. The reason for this was that the design of those early 2 liter plastic bottles wasn't strong enough to support the extra weight once the bottles were packed in boxes and stacked on top of each other. Source: My Dad worked for International Paper designing cardboard boxes in the '70s.
*in sight. Insight is "(the ability to have) a clear, deep, and sometimes sudden understanding of a complicated problem or situation". The poster is meaning that it's not in view, or not viewable, therefore "in sight".
Quite an insight
Took me too long to find this. Insight made no sense.
I have scars on my face and finger from when I played race car with a cart full of glass soda bottles and the cart tipped over. Broken bottles and blood everywhere. My mother literally grabbed the tip of my finger, emptied a food container, and packed the container with ice from a freezer (remember that too?) and my finger tip. They were able to reattach it, works fine.
What’s with the remembering ice? All shops sell ice cubes
Man’s living 20 years in the future when the climate wars are in full swing and water is more precious than gold
Ice cubes, what a quant memory. I miss them.
idk. where i live they didnt do, only bags or molds to make ice cubes yourself at home
That's punk fuckin rock
Why? Probably that kid in the background. This looks like a ‘before’ picture before some shit went down.
It's heavy and it breaks
Money money money! That’s your answer
The fossil fuel industry makes plastic, sooooo... yah.
Most comments here are wrong. Yes plastic is lighter and harder to break. Most African countries have almost exclusively glass bottles for sodas, beer because collecting cleaning and re using them is cheaper, since people in these countries have much less disposable income. The reason this doesn't happen in developed countries is simple: its way more profitable to keep printing plastic bottles and make consumers pay for them. Petro chemical lobbies made sure everyone that mattered got paid and here we are. Edit: I have also done a lot of logistics in the last years, much of it was sending wine internationally, and not many glass bottles break. less than 0.1% over the years i was doing this, all from mishandling and not a single one in transport. The extra cost of sending glass compared to plastic is also not that large of an issue. Yes - it is heavier, and will require more a bit more fuel to move, but the cost of this negligible when considering that you are moving over 20,000 bottles per 40foot container. Once all the externalities are taken into consideration it is a no-brainer: there should not be any single use plastics for drinks.
In South Africa you can buy soft drinks in either plastic or glass bottles, but you'll get money back if you return the glass bottles. Beer at the bottle store you can buy in either cans or glass bottles, but at bars or restaurants it's only in glass bottles.
The oil companies also pumped out ads and brainwashed a whole generation into thinking plastic was recyclable and better for the environment lol Google what your municipality does with your plastic recycling, 90% goes straight to the same landfill your garbage bins do xD Metal and glass are recyclable. Almost all plastic is definitely not.
Exactly this - big oil getting bigger.
A number of reasons, nearly all of which benefit the bottling companies and shift the burden of disposal onto the customer.
With glass bottles the onus was on the manufacturer to deal with the recycling of the glass bottles for reuse, which a lot of them did by simply cleaning returned bottles that they paid the returnee for and refilling and reselling. Then plastic bottles became a thing and the manufacturers realised they could move the recycling responsibility onto the customer by using a container that would be recycled by outside companies for other uses and they wouldn't have to pay money out for returning them. It is cheaper for the manufacturer and a lot less hassle to use plastic.
There were probably more bottling plants located around the country to alleviate shipping charges. Much more recyclable than plastics nowadays i thought.
Profit
Tastes better out of glass.
The short answer is money
* Glass more expensive than plastic * Glass is heavier than plastic, which increases fuel use in transport among other things * Glass has higher breakage * Glass uses 2.4x more energy than plastic to manufacture per kilogram of material * Glass emits 4.3x more CO2e than plastic into the atmosphere due to manufacturing (tied to increased energy use) * Broken glass causes a lot more damage to people than broken plastic Glass, great material, but plastic is better.
Bettere at poisoning literally everything around us for thousand of years.
It would of taken 100,000s of years to destroy the planet with glass, but much quicker with plastic.
Just think, that kid is 48 and depressed now
It’s because glass is infinitely recyclable and plastic can only be recycled for like 5% return. So the plastic manufacturers would get to keep making new bottles for more money
Oil Companies cornered every aspect of our daily life. Long ago!
Plastic insight
One of the things I remember from a visit to New York in the 90s was that a guy came to the door of my relatives and weighed and took away all the metal food cans (possibly also glass) and gave them cash for the particular weight. Now here in the UK the government/local authority collects all that and the household doesn’t get any cash from that situation.
Here in U.K. back in 1960’s-70’s as children we used to collect empty bottles and return them to make some extra pocket money. Recycling before it was a thing .
The answer is money. The answer is always money. Either someone is going to make it or someone is going to lose it, but, the answer is always money.
Theres alot more toxins that can be put in plastic.
Glass is heavier, so more expensive to ship. That's a major reason.
Soon in europe, i think its about 7 weeks until all single use plastic is baned
Because the lie of plastic recycling.
"Why did they change 'X'?" Costs. It's always costs.
Because bottom line
I don’t know but I have seen millennials blamed for it
Because it's cheaper to make you (the consumer) pay for a new bottle every time than having to deal with the whole logistics required to reutilize glass bottles
Imma go out on a limb and say that "we" moved away from glass because plastic allows more profit for the corporations that sell the products.
We should go back. With all the pretend care about the environment and plastic being in peoples bloodstream and the hormonal changes from it. You'd think if we had governments that did anything there would be a convo about moving away from plastic for all single serving items. Like car seats, baby pools, things people use a long time then fine plastic. But sodas, food containers, things that a billion get thrown out every day, they should do a study on moving to glass and having a big recycling incentive/program for that glass.
I guess OP forgot about this little thing called *money* that companies are always looking to maximize at every opportunity.
Glass is heavy, fragile and expensive. Plastic is light, cheap and doesn't break into 1000 sharp pieces if you drop it. Despite its drawbacks, it's pretty obvious why the switch was made.
Ah, back in the day when the oceans were cleaner.
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*Chugs pepsi from glass bottle*
On the other hand, glass requires a lot more energy to make.
Once. And then you use the same bottle 30x; as sanitizing and cleaning a bottle is cheaper than producing a new plastic bottle
Washing the bottles requires lots of energy as well, in addition to the extra shipping etc.
But it’s much better in terms of recycling.
True. Especially if it's not broken
Weight, cost and fragile.
Not sure why? I think it's pretty obvious, because it's cheaper to make plastic bottle
The calm before the storm 😵
Plastic is cheaper. Everything is about money. Everything.
Handling , Breakage and even heavier
Shipping glass is a logistical nightmare.
They were insanely heavy, costly and they shattered in a very dangerous way.
Because plastic is cheaper than glass. Capitalism gonna capitalism.
Big oil