kirbgood’s Recent Comments

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  death of returnables

  There was a contrary posting to my earlier comment that liability killed returnables.  I realize that it died due to a number of factors, but I have in my files a copy of a letter sent by container mfrs to wine mfrs in the State of WA when a company was trying to start up a wine bottle washing business in the early 90's.

  The letter stated that wine bottles were not made for re-use, and therefore any liability for defective or failing bottles was completely the responsibility of the wine mfr if they used ANY washed bottles.  If you were a little wine producer, what would you do?  I call that being scared off by liability.

  Another specific issue with regard to beer bottles was that the standard "long neck" bar bottle, the most commonly washed beer bottle, was "unstandardized" by several beer mfrs, to make theirs slightly taller then the competition.  Unsortable.  

  Then there is the ceramic ink printed bottle like Corona.  Unwashable.  

  And wine bottle mfrs have gone from water-based paper labels to press-apply water resistant labels.  Unwashable.

  And my guess is that the American public would be less likely to tolerate a scuffed bottle than forty years ago.
  On More on glass recycling and reuse posted 3 years, 9 months ago 5 Responses

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  glass recycling benefits

  Aside from the studies quoted in the article, the best I've seen was one done by Argonne Labs, although it's probably twenty years old now.  So it goes with environmental studies.  That report concluded that the breakeven truck shipping point for glass recycling was about 100 miles out and back (200 mile round trip) for the recycling system.  I have a copy somewhere if anyone needs the specific reference.

  Just using common sense, the Ball Glass plant in Seattle gets its silica sand from Lane Mountain, 250 miles away, it's sodium carbonate from Wyoming, 500+ miles away, and its calcium carbonate from Vancouver Island, 200 miles away.  The raw materials are shipped that distance, then they lose 15 percent of their weight during melting (mostly carbon dioxide and NOx).  i'll bet CO2 wasn't counted as a pollutant in those older articles.

  In addition, old glass melts and fines at a lower temp than virgin glass batch.  In fact in the days before recycling was formalized, glass plants would add old glass to flux the virgin batch materials.

  The Container Recycling Alliance used to make a cogent case that the most efficient thing to do with glass bottles was wash them.  Liability concerns killed the practice in the U.S., despite that fact that many of us managed to live through drinking from chipped Coke bottles in the 60's.  And people seem to survive in Mexico, where the Coke bottles are still washed.

  The subject of glass vs plastic is too complex to have an easy answer, and includes the topics of raw materials for both, manufacturing practices for both, weight of both, and environmental stability of both.

  The one comment in the article I might take issue with is the "efficient electric furnaces."  The electricity is created by the transformation of gas to mechanical power to electricity to electrical resistance heat in the glass batch.  That wouldn't seem to be very efficient vs burning the gas in the chamber with the glass.  Even here in the Pacific Northwest, with hydro, each incremental additional kilowatt hour still comes from gas or coal.
  On Is recycling glass worth it? posted 3 years, 9 months ago 6 Responses