It depends on which aspects of the environmental impact you’re looking at, as melting glass to recycle it can be much more damaging than landfilling several plastic bottles if the glass furnace is heated by fossil fuels. If glass bottles are washed and reused, they’re much better than plastic, but that’s rarely what happens.
The cleaning was common back then. Every store took back the tall glass bottles of soda and in modern times oberweiss brought that back with milk. The glass melting is nice just as a final option really.
Gas is used to heat up glass furnaces most of the time. But it is possible to use elctricity aswell, which is more and more sources from either solar or nuclear.
Not saying it is greener than plastic when it comes to electricity and shipping.
It depends on which aspects of the environmental impact you’re looking at, as melting glass to recycle it can be much more damaging than landfilling several plastic bottles if the glass furnace is heated by fossil fuels. If glass bottles are washed and reused, they’re much better than plastic, but that’s rarely what happens.
The cleaning was common back then. Every store took back the tall glass bottles of soda and in modern times oberweiss brought that back with milk. The glass melting is nice just as a final option really.
Gas is used to heat up glass furnaces most of the time. But it is possible to use elctricity aswell, which is more and more sources from either solar or nuclear.
Not saying it is greener than plastic when it comes to electricity and shipping.