Glass is the hidden gem in a carbon-neutral future

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02992-8

by _Microft • 5 years ago

120 141 5 years ago

nature.com

speeder• 5 years ago

Meanwhile for years people used to say glass last forever and thus instead we should use biodegradable plastic...

ouid• 5 years ago

When you say people, who are you referring to? I have never heard anyone claim that.

wlll• 5 years ago

I (from the uk) have never heard that personally.

neltnerb6• 5 years ago

What! Where did they say that! I've always been told to recycle glass because it's easy to make new glass from, is this a recent thing?

Sounds like malicious advertising from people making PLA garbage, which I mean literally since "compostable plastic" rarely is without expensive industrial composting equipment (instead it contaminates the compost so you can't use it) and PLA (while theoretically recyclable) is not so in basically any curbside recycling anywhere.

If you collect it special and find a specialty recycler it can be done, but it's hardly going to fall apart sitting in a landfill in an anaerobic (oxygen-free) environment.

foobarian2• 5 years ago

My understanding is that recycling glass is energy intensive to the point where it's not economical, leading recycling programs like in our local town to choose to dump the collected glass instead.

The most effective recycling seems to be for aluminum due to high energy cost of converting the ore, and low cost of melting the metal.

willvarfar• 5 years ago

I recall people in the UK saying in the 80s we should use plastic bags instead of paper to save the trees. But cordial was still sold in glass bottles with a deposit. The only negative sentiment I recall for glass was a belief that discarded bottles started forest fires and killed animals that crept into them but couldn’t get back out.

dredmorbius• 5 years ago

Glass degrades (physically) ultimately to inert pebbles or sand. Not sure who you were hearing this from, if you were, but it was a bogus argument.

gumby• 5 years ago

As was posted on HN a few weeks ago this seems to have been part of an advertising / propaganda effort by the plastics companies, alongside the idea of recyclable plastics.

ganzuul2• 5 years ago

Have some relevant science! - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eutectic_system

Similar to this is metallic glass, which has the potential to be injection molded. If we can figure out Fe-based bulk metallic glass then a lot of problems will be solved.

neltnerb6• 5 years ago

In terms of recyclability, I don't think metallic glass has any advantage over polycrystalline metal.

It's much stronger though.

justinator2• 5 years ago

Well if we can’t recycle it does it break down into tiny particles that then become a part of the food chain? If the answer is no then maybe worth a look.

ganzuul2• 5 years ago

If the melting point can get low enough then we're in business. Press quenching has been developed pretty well for boron steel and should be adaptable for bulk metallic glass in injection molding machines. This would provide an easy route to high volume production. Surprisingly, eutectic systems are resistant to impurities. Perhaps this is why silicate sand glass became a thing in the first place.

Aluminum has a problem with oxide dross, and tin cans require high temperature for recycling. I don't know if the tin is recovered, but I do know that it isn't very plentiful.

recursivedoubts• 5 years ago

as a treat i will occasionally let my boys get a "mexican coke", which is coke from mexico that comes in a real glass bottle and has real sugar, rather than corn syrup

my oldest asked why, since it tastes so much better and feels so much nicer to hold glass, we don't have this style of coke here

well, son, we are too rich to afford that

alex_young• 5 years ago

The bottles you’re drinking out of may actually be reused too. We used to do the same thing in the US, but we shipped all of the equipment to Mexico when we ‘upgraded’ to plastic.

lhorie• 5 years ago

These days, the story is a bit more complicated. Not all Mexican coke is made with sugar anymore[0]

In 2013, a Mexican Coca-Cola bottler announced it would stop using cane sugar in favor of glucose-fructose syrup. It later clarified this change would not affect those bottles specifically exported to the United States as "Coca-Cola Nostalgia" products.
A scientific analysis of Mexican Coke found no sucrose (standard sugar), but instead found total fructose and glucose levels similar to other soft drinks sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup, though in different ratios.

The shift to plastic, as I understand, mostly has to do with freight economics: glass is heavier and more fragile.

Personally, I wouldn't mind a third alternate consumption model: fill your own container. Many places already have fountain drink machines. It's really not that big of a stretch to allow reusable bottles there

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Coke

nielsbot2• 5 years ago

What about a home carbonator and cola syrup?

alsobrsp• 5 years ago

The shift to plastic, as I understand, mostly has to do with freight economics: glass is heavier and more fragile.

Having tried to do online pasta sauce, I can confirm glass is expensive to ship. 6 jars cost us $30USD to ship and some would break. We insured the shipment and made more on the broken reships than a normal sale.

megablast• 5 years ago

Soda stream.

lobocinza• 5 years ago

Coke on Brazil has a returnable container. It's not glass though but a thick plastic. When you return it to the store you pay a lot less. Returnable glass bottles for beer are also predominant here. Logistically it makes sense because the trucks would return base empty otherwise.

fencepost2• 5 years ago

If the big factor for you is sugar vs corn syrup, Pepsi has you covered year-round for some products with "Pepsi Throwback" and "Mountain Dew Throwback" though they may have changed the branding. The 12-can cases of them will have either a script-style logo or a retro design.

On a more seasonal basis I believe both Coke and Pepsi do "kosher for Passover" versions with cane sugar that may be available in your area.

cassepipe• 5 years ago

Actually I have read something about it but I can't find the source anymore. From memory : More than half of people tested in a blind test could not make any difference between mexican coke and regular coke. The fact that it uses (or used to , can't remember) saccharine instead of corn syrup does make much difference as both decompose in a mix of fructose and glucose. Mexican coke had a bit more fructose that glucose but both are very simple form of sugar and science has not been able to establish than one is better than the other for your health. It did establish that simple sugars are bad a bad diet though.

pvaldes• 5 years ago

There was some humidity and the soluble coffe (from a popular brand) compacted in the glass canister, so after doing a little pick work I had the great idea of putting it in the microwave (to remove all the water and have a coffee powder again, Easy peasy).

To my surprise the result was worse, all melted into a sort of really sticky chocolate tar.

It seems that everything has sugar added currently.

brandonmenc• 5 years ago

it tastes so much better

Disagree.

I know I'm in the minority, but I prefer the mouthfeel of corn syrup or artificial sweetener and I find that real sugar is way too sweet. I mean, I'll still drink it - I just think it's way overrated.

I wonder if I'll ever meet anyone who agrees.

loonster• 5 years ago

It's the actual glass bottle that I prefer.

I also prefer drinking beer from a pop off bottle instead of a twist off. And either much more than a can.

jagger272• 5 years ago

What are the arguments against all beverages using those standardized reusable beer bottles? Why melt down perfectly good glass when it can be safely reused a solid dozen times before finally being recycled?

I’m wondering how much glass bottles contribute to transportation-related emissions versus aluminum and plastic.

depereo• 5 years ago

I can think of one - you do not know the heat/impact stress it has received when out of your custody, and don't want to be responsible for its unexpected shattering while your client is using it. Reforging adds some guarantees.

ordiel4• 5 years ago

Of course you dont want that... In the US, where they will sue you for looking wrong at people or they will rally up a crowd in protest... In the rest of the world where people are normal that is not a problem. Specially considetong that if the glass is already fragile it will either crack during cleaning or while being transported. If the bottle can handle being clinking on the bands while being filled up, I am sure it can stand being on the fragile hands of some folks

jagger272• 5 years ago

In Ontario we seem to manage this fairly well.

https://www.thestar.com/life/food_wine/2013/06/28/the_averag...

VBprogrammer• 5 years ago

Milk bottles Of my youth and glass bottles of Scotland's famous Irn Bru seemed to survive without causing death and injury to everyone coming close to one.

I think you are being overly paranoid.

_Microft7• 5 years ago

We have something like that in Germany. For consumption at home, mineral water or carbonated lemonade beverages are usually available in standardized bottles [0] and bottle crates [1] (which can be conveniently stacked). The bottles can be refilled up to 50 times until they need to be taken out of the cycle. You can usually return them at shops that sell them, even if you haven't bought them at this exact shop. There is a (small) deposit per bottle and crate that incentivizes returning them.

[0] (german) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normbrunnenflasche

[1] (german) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getr%C3%A4nkekiste

chana_masala2• 5 years ago

Wie weist man wie viele Male eine Flasche schon genutzt wird?

dkarp• 5 years ago

I liked this system a lot when I lived in Germany. Although living in a 4th floor apartment without an elevator, buying crates of heavy duty glass bottles was a bit of a drag compared with cans.

The bottles are great to drink out of though and, since they have real redeemable value, you don't see empty bottles littering the street.

ingas• 5 years ago

Very interesting.

It was absolutely the same in Soviet Union.

I still remember formula from my childhood: 3 empty bottles (10 kopeks each) + 3 kopeks = 1 full bottle of lemonade (33 kopeks).

I think it was a good thing, less glass garbage at least.

You usually return them at shops that sell them, even if you haven't bought them at this exact shop.

It seems that such things needs some central regulation, they did not survive in pure capitalism

ghaff• 5 years ago

Weight in transportation systems is probably one factor. I'd also observe that more and more mid-range to higher-end beers are shifting to cans. It used to be almost impossible to find canned beer (which we preferred for canoe camping) outside of the mass market BudMillCoors stuff.

germinalphrase• 5 years ago

The lining material got better. Back in the day, canned beer tastes off. Today, that’s not a factor.

For canoe camping, I go bagged red wine or brandy. Keeps the weight down on the portage.

hinkley2• 5 years ago

Glass and ceramic share something in common. When they are forged entirely of virgin material, they are more prone to deformation and stress fracturing. So you pulverize old pieces and add them into the mix prior to firing.

If it’s stronger, you can make it lighter and still meet safety margins. This makes preconsumer recycling virtually mandatory, and makes post consumer a more attractive option.

tgsovlerkhgsel2• 5 years ago

Glass bottles were very common in Germany, as there was a standing threat that a punitive deposit on single-use bottles would be introduced if the fraction of drinks sold in reusable bottles dropped too low.

Once that happened (fraction dropped, punitive deposit was introduced, and thus the threat was gone), glass bottles mostly disappeared.

This strongly indicates that there is some factor that makes them undesirable. My guess would be that the reverse logistics are so expensive that it doesn't make economical sense, which is also a good hint that it may not make sense ecologically either. Because you save the production of the bottles, but now you have to transport the heavy glass, twice, for each drink sold.

NegativeLatency• 5 years ago

I think you’d have to measure that as calculating the total impact of each option is quite difficult to get accurate.

Additionally some of the costs may be externalized in the case of pollution or trash from single use bottles.

simlan• 5 years ago

None of those bottles disappeared. Beer, juices etc are still very commonly sold in reusable glass bottles that re returned. What happened is that the discounters found the new system with deposits on plastics very appealing because it fit into there logistics better than offering glass bottled drinks. Also the remaining the plastic bottles normalized there use similar to glass bottles because they perceived waste production from those bottles was gone.

142• 5 years ago

With all the glass being thrown away for some reason the concrete industry came to my mind. Made me wonder if crushed glass could be used in concrete since glass is essential sand? I know concrete needs a specific type or sand and maybe glass would be a no go for cement but it popped in my mind and has me wondering what we could replace the sand with. Also the main issue I see with glass is it is at least twice as heavy. So the carbon emissions savings would need to offset the transportation emissions.

toomuchtodo• 5 years ago

Another comment mentions this is done in New Zealand. It appears adding glass to concrete increases durability, while adding plastic or rubber decreases durability (sidenote: adding rubber to asphalt increases durability of tarmac/road surfaces, while reducing maintenance costs and road noise).

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09500...

http://asphaltmagazine.com/asphalt-rubber-pavement-moves-eas...

142• 5 years ago

Thanks for the links!

robocat2• 5 years ago

As I understand it, the sorting, cleaning and transportation of recycled glass is more costly (i.e. worse for the environment) than using virgin materials.

In New Zealand AFAIK collected glass is crushed and added as sand to concrete (perhaps reducing logistics waste?): https://productspec.co.nz/media/f2ebqrwk/architects-booklet-...

Baeocystin2• 5 years ago

Here in California, the local landfill crushes the mixed-color glass and uses it as a cap on the day's waste to help keep things contained. It's an important function, and (IMO) a good use for the glass. I do believe that the sorted-clear glass is still valuable enough to be diverted back in to new production.

_Microft7• 5 years ago

Equating cost with environmental friendliness might not be the best thing to do because this exactly fails in systems where externalities are not priced in yet.

robocat2• 5 years ago

I agree.

But the externalities of sorting/cleaning/transportation would also need to be measured.

The article sort of mentions this, but overall it is a typically unbalanced "recycling is 100% good" and "More countries need to pass laws to reduce waste and eventually stop sending glass to landfill" without the balance of looking at the total waste of recycling versus using virgin material.

Meanwhile, I think money is often a good proxy for environmental damage (especially as an individual), because the safest bet is to assume externalities are similar even for two very different choices.

fencepost2• 5 years ago

It's not a huge use, but in the US I believe ground recycled glass is spread over freshly painted road markings while they're wet so it bonds into the top.

coolspot• 5 years ago

AFAIK it’s not recycled, but specifically made tiny glass spheres. Crushed glass doesn’t magically return light back as glass spheres do.

CephalopodMD• 5 years ago

It takes a lot of gas to 1. get glass to a recycler and 2. Ship that recycled material to bottlers, stores, etc. It's not really a panacea for that reason.

hinkley2• 5 years ago

When I was a child you exchanged the coke bottles at the grocery store. This decreases the footprint of the glass because you were going to the store anyway. If the distributor also transports the empties back on the same vehicle, then the footprint is mostly down to the production side - a bottle of Coke costs what a bottle Coke costs.

stormbrew• 5 years ago

A heavy truck uses more gas than a light one. It's never free to move heavy things around, it's just another externality. There's certainly some economy of scale to having the grocery store do the moving instead of individually owned cars doing 'small' (on an industrial scale) runs to depots, but it's really pretty hard to account for.

agileAlligator• 5 years ago

Still a helluvalot better than just burying that glass in landfills. Requires gas to get it there as well, yaknow.

citruscomputing• 5 years ago

Can't help but wonder... You're supposed to reduce, reuse, recycle, in that order. Could we standardize a few glass container shapes, and provide easy ways to return them for re-use, rather than spending the energy breaking them down and melting them back into the same shapes again? I would be fine with all my bottled drinks coming in just a few shapes.

smallnamespace• 5 years ago

Does the melting process need to run nonstop? If not, you can use cheap off-peak renewables for it too.

kortex2• 5 years ago

Currently yes. There's a lot of heat capacity to the furnaces so a cold start requires a lot of heat to get to nominal. That's not to say one couldn't be designed in such a way that it can be set to idle without losing too much heat. It's probably much easier to do that if it's electric vs nat gas.

hervature• 5 years ago

I can't tell if this is satire. We used to do exactly this with milk bottles. From [1]:

"In 1975, 94% of milk in the UK was in glass bottles, but as of 2012 this number was down to 4%."

The reality is that plastic is so much cheaper that people balk at the cost of recycling exactly like the price of humanely treated chicken eggs even if they want to do the right thing.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_milk_bottle

blitzar• 5 years ago

Proud to say that my milk is in the 4%. Interesting how sometimes progress is a step in the wrong direction, the milk man even had an electric car way back in the day!

balk at the cost of recycling exactly like the price of humanely treated chicken eggs even if they want to do the right thing

That is right before they balk at paying the farmer more than 25p a litre to produce the milk they are going to drink.

qw• 5 years ago

Over 90% of bottles sold in Norway are returned to be recycled, and most of them probably go through automatic machines in the shops.

Norway and other countries have a deposit system where you pay extra per bottle, and then get the money back when you return them. Places that sell these products are required to accept any bottle that their customers bring them, so most of them want to use these automatic machines to avoid hiring extra staff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZI7OldXuq7c

These machines have existed since the 70s, but the modern machines are of course much more intelligent than the early models. They used to accept glass bottles too, but they are not part of this system anymore. (glass is recycled separately)

Tomra is one of the larger manufacturers:

https://www.tomra.com/en/collection/reverse-vending

endisneigh• 5 years ago

a carbon neutral future will never come as long as wealth inequality exists at the levels they're currently at.

all carbon negative or neutral actions will disproportionally harm the poor and middle class who will use political power in order to prevent said changes.

i'd love to be wrong, but the evidence is there.

reusing glass, though is environmentally friendly, would drastically increase the price of beverages. it's not going to happen at scale.

KaiserPro2• 5 years ago

I don't think this article is based in fact.

Glass cannot be infinitely recycled, as they point out later on, glass containers can be recycled, but not windows. it gets more contaminates in. Also colour glass needs to be treated separately.

They also seem to not understand that melting glass eats a fucktonne of power.

From my reading of this: https://www.nrel.gov/docs/legosti/old/5703.pdf Using 100% recycled glass only reduces energy use from 4.3 megawatt hour per ton(for virgin glass) to 3.8mwhr per ton

By far the biggest saving is to reuse the bottles.

unless i've missed something, this article is pure horse shit.

comradesmith• 5 years ago

Sand mining is ecologically destructive.

coryrc4• 5 years ago

Depends on the kind of sand, that worry is more about sharp sand. I believe ocean sand can be used for glass?

godelski• 5 years ago

While this is true, I'm not sure this statement alone is helpful to the discussion. I'm not sure that mining of any material is not ecologically destructive. So we have to compare _how_ destructive different materials are to gather and then probably full chain. Given the glass can be recycled, that's an advantage on full chain. Maybe someone knows more than me (not my field) but I'm willing to bet that glass is better in both amounts when compared to the popular alternative, plastic.

KaiserPro2• 5 years ago

I should clarify that I am not against recycling of glass. I actively do it (but then I live in Europe.

I agree that we are using sand at an unsustainable rate.

However I am disputing the assertion that the USA recycling its glass will make a material impact on climate change, compared to switching to nuclear/solar/other

senectus1• 5 years ago

not only that but we're actually running out of the stuff:

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20191108-why-the-world-is...

hn_throwaway_99• 5 years ago

Not just the melting of the glass, but the collecting of the glass, sorting it, cleaning and crushing also take a lot of energy.

Again, as the world is learning/has learned, recycling is not "free" and is much, much worse than (a) reducing the need in the first place and (b) reusing.

thechao• 5 years ago

Reduce, reuse, and put in a giant pit so we know where to find it later.

SteveGerencser• 5 years ago

I worked at Pepsi in the 80s when we were still doing glass bottles. There was an entire line of guys that stood there all day and sorted glass bottle by soda. A 24 bottle tray with random bottles was grabbed at the head of the line and as it went down the line you grabbed the bottles for your stack, Pepsi, Mt. Dew, Diet Pepsi, and so on and put them in a 24 bottle tray of just that flavor. Once you had a full pallet of trays you hit a buzzer and fork lift guy would swing by and grab that whole pallet.

This went on all day, every day. If I recall there were 5 or 6 guys on the line plus forklift guy. And life sucked if one guy was sick.

Then, once all the bottles were sorted they were all put on the bottling line and washed, sterilized and refilled with soda.

Plastic did away with a lot of jobs at the bottling plants. Maybe 20 people per plant? Then the lack of a need to wash and refill glass did away with all the "local" plants that were scattered all over the country to just a handful these days.

ashtonkem• 5 years ago

Aluminum is the real winner for recycling. It is far more economic and energy efficient to recycle existing aluminum than it is to make new stuff from ores.

YetAnotherNick• 5 years ago

I can't get the point of the article. I don't think we ever reached a point that we recycled plastic so many times that it started loosing its property. Most of the applications of plastic doesn't even require best grade plastic.

legulere• 5 years ago

One use for recycled glass is insulation in the form of foam glass. Another win for the environment.

dghughes3• 5 years ago

Here in Canada in my small province there had been a "can ban" for many decades. The ban was mainly to protect the jobs of local bottling plants although the reason was spun that it was to be green.

Then in May 2008 the ban ended. Up until then it was only glass even 750ml pop which seemed massive. Pepsi had twisted spiral 750ml bottles that seemed to weigh 10kg each.

When the can ban ended the 355ml pop bottles were replaced with plastic pop bottles but the plastic were 590ml. The 750ml glass disappeared and were replaced with 2 litre p[plastic bottles.

At my old work we had a pop machine in the lunch room it had glass bottles. It was obviously designed to have plastic bottles or cans. When the bottle fell it sounds like someone dropped a bag of hammers from two floor above you.

I observed how my co-workers who were used to drinking 355ml of pop now bought 590ml bottles of pop. The lunchroom fridge was stuffed with half drunk plastic bottles. Over the next few weeks there were fewer and fewer half bottles. Then eventually just a few half drunk 590ml pop bottles in the fridge. People unknowingly had trained themselves to drink nearly double the amount of pop.

I wish I had recorded it in more detail. It was a fascinating human behaviour event to observe.

generalizations• 5 years ago

I read about a study where people were given soup to eat, in various quantities, and some were given bowls rigged to be bottomless. In general, they ate until the bowls were empty - except for the bottomless bowls, where they'd eat far more than any of the other groups.

I'm drawing on a 15-20 year old memory, so that's IIRC.

martingoodson• 5 years ago

This experiment was probably falsified. https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2019/08/20/did-that-b...

kortex2• 5 years ago

I'm surprised to read in these comments that bottle reuse at the commercial scale is quite common in some areas.

Here in NY we recycle glass but it's primarily through single stream recycling or via bottle deposit machines, which I believe both smash the bottles and mix the streams. I presume this is because bins of broken glass are significantly higher bulk density than in-tact bottles.

Seems like this boils down to a logistics and handling problem.

I think we are reaching a point where it makes sense for an "ISO Container" but smaller scale, for ease of automated logistics. Something basically like a milk crate but better for automated stacking, shuttling along conveyers, and un/loading by robots. It would be an interesting way to come full-circle for glass bottle reuse.

Edit: did some digging and I guess Euro boxes are a thing.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_container

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systainer

masklinn• 5 years ago

I'm surprised to read in these comments that bottle reuse at the commercial scale is quite common in some areas.

In euro beer country, bottle deposits are super common even on table beer (your basic lager), there’s automated sorting machines which work on crates (24 bottles, of either 25cl or 33cl) as well as singles and spits out a barcoded ticket you redeem at the till, usually using it to pay for the next crate.

paulkrush• 5 years ago

They state in the article if the world 100% stops making new glass we will save 19 lbs of co2 per person from being emitted. 86m tons world wide per year. Stopping a 1/2 beef burger from being made will save 18 lbs of co2 equivalent from being released. So glass is not the place for a big greenhouse gas impact. What sucks is if I don't buy this big burger I will not stop it from being made. I will just make it cheaper for others to eat beef.

aj72• 5 years ago

Glass bottles are heavy. QED.

Glass is the hidden gem in a carbon-neutral future

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