This recycling-is-actually-worse-for-the-environment B.S. is an old lie put out by the extractive industries that stand to benefit by consumption of raw materials (i.e., ecological destruction).  When I worked in the SF Greenpeace office (around 1985), I had to talk the office director into using recycled paper, because he believed the industry lies that recycling was worse for the environment.  The good news is that after I produced documentation showing how much energy and raw materials were saved by recycling, he let me choose the paper for the entire office!  I used that opportunity to choose 100% recycled, unbleached paper, and that paper was used until the closing of that office.

Jeff Hoffman

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.

Yes this is supreme inefficiency.  

What would make glass recycling the clear energy conservation winner over oil based plastic containers thrown in a landfill?

Storing peak energy from wind and solar power in recycled glass.  When peak power production occurs that exceeds demand, energy intensive processes like glass recycling can take advantage of that excess.  

And then recapturing heat energy from the cooling glass with cogeneration would reintroduce some of the waste heat back into the power grid.

Of course with modern robotics and sensing equipment, that could indicate when a glass container is fatally chipped, simply washing glass containers a few use cycles before they need to be actually melted down would be the clear winner.

Organic milk is sold around here in old fashioned glass milk bottles.  Combining the energy savings of washable reuse with glass recycling.

Transportation of materials for recycling could also be done with peak renewable power by battery electric powered trucks that would recharge when excess power is generated by wind and solar and transport the materials later on.

High energy manufacturing processes are already being used to buffer inconsistency between supply and demand on the power grid by running factories during offpeak time periods and shutting them down during peak demand.

With robotics this is easier to acomplish given the time flexibility of machines versus the human labor force.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

The bottling industry pushed recycling instead of reuse.  When this happened here in California and the industry's recyling bill was passed -- to the applause of mis- and ill informed people, I would add -- reuse of old bottles immediately came to an end.  I don't remember hearing anything about liability, and it would have been a red herring in any event.  The fact is that the evil industry (is that redundant?) wanted to get rid of reuse in order to make more money.

Jeff Hoffman

anyone else remember when we recycled glass in the 60s and 70s?  You returned the bottle, they WASHED it out sanitized it and then refilled it -- what a weird concept -- washing glass containers anf reusing them!

seems a shame there is a village needing an idiot somewhere in texas