eli5 Why are glass bottles not used more for soft drinks if plastic is such a nightmare for the planet?
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I work in the industry, and at our plant, the cheapest overall option is cans, second cheapest is PET bottles, and on a very distant third, glass. I don’t expect other companies to have reached significantly different conclusions than we have.
Cans cost more per liter of beverage than plastic bottles, but can be stacked denser than plastic bottles, which means more drink per truck, more drink per forklift, and of course takes up less storage space in our warehouses. This makes them come out on top overall vs plastic. Plastic is of course more sturdy, and many customers like resealable containers.
Glass is less sturdy than plastic, holds way less beverage per pallet, and weighs significantly more. This means we would need to drive more trucks, and that each truck would be more heavily loaded.
These factors lead to much higher emissions, which are also bad for the environment, and this is before we even start including the energy costs of producing glass bottles. Even if you reuse them , which often isn’t the case, a glass bottle would need to be refilled dozens of times before it saves energy vs making ultra cheap alu cans or pet bottles. If the glass bottle gets too worn out, chipped, or smashed to bits in a forklift accident (this happens pretty often) before its been reused that many times, it’s a net loss
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