Comments on: Forget Plastic – Let’s Go Back To Using Glass.

By: david

david — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 23:41:45 +0000

Most don’t fully biodegrade 100% (nothing does, really). Degrade, yes. But biodegrade, not normally and not all the time. A lot of these “bioplastics” bother me though because A. we are now using food to package things in, when millions go hungry every day and B. we need to focus on reducing all packaging rather than just reformulating it. I suppose it’s better than regular plastic, but I do have my concerns.

By: EarthyChick6

EarthyChick6 — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 04:55:19 +0000

Bioplastic don’t come from petroleum check out the world centric website; they have biodegradable plastics that are sugar cane based. Then there is hemp oil (but that is illegal) that can be made in to strong plastic that also biodegrades … how many years does a plastic grocery bag or soda bottle need to be here anyway?

RE: Comment by david on 10 March 2009:

Plastic comes from petroleum, and there really isnt anything that can replicate the strength and longevity of it.

By: Christine

Christine — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 21:51:55 +0000

The usual argument I hear against your excellent idea is that it will be more expensive to transport glass than plastic in trucks.

Which brings me to the next question–why aren’t we using freight trains to transport all this stuff, instead of trucks?

By: Jeneva

Jeneva — Fri, 15 May 2009 18:18:29 +0000

“It”™s not a glass vs plastic issue; it”™s a social issue. If someone doesn”™t recyele the plastic bottle, what makes you think they are going to recylce a glass one.”

Except that it IS a glass vs plastic issue, because of all the non-recycled plastic that ends up in the environment, never biodegrading and only breaking down into smaller and more toxic pieces of plastic. Glass and metal are better alternatives because they are inert, don’t leach or absorb toxins like plastic does, and don’t float like plastic does. Glass and metal eventually break down, by weathering and rusting, into mostly sand and iron molecules. Plastic never does — nearly every bit of plastic that has ever been manufactured is still in existence today, and will be for thousands of years into the future, absorbing and transporting persistent organic pollutants everywhere it travels.

Even if nobody EVER recycled their glass bottles or returned them for refilling (which is unlikely — even those thrown away by people who don’t care will often be picked up by people who want the refund or recycling money, there’s practically a cottage industry in it), they would still at least not end up floating in a Texas-sized patch of garbage in the middle of the ocean, being eaten by and poisoning/shredding from the inside all varieties of sea life, the way that plastic does in the Pacific Garbage Patch.