{"items": [{"author": "Andrew", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100102039369122?comment_id=10100102040267322", "anchor": "fb-10100102040267322", "service": "fb", "text": "What about just requiring manufacturers to have the US infrastructure to reuse or recycle non-standard containers?", "timestamp": "1563158721"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100102039369122?comment_id=10100102040267322&reply_comment_id=10100102040297262", "anchor": "fb-10100102040267322_10100102040297262", "service": "fb", "text": "→ There's a scale benefit from getting large parts of industry onto a small number of container shapes that you wouldn't get there.", "timestamp": "1563158776"}, {"author": "BDan", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100102039369122?comment_id=10100102042148552", "anchor": "fb-10100102042148552", "service": "fb", "text": "I\u2019m not sure standardization across industries is necessary to get most of the benefit. All you need is for containers to be designed for reuse and returned to the maker of the product. When I was a kid the local convenience store chain sold milk in reusable (heavy duty plastic) jugs, and soda in reusable (glass) bottles. People just returned them to the store.", "timestamp": "1563159604"}, {"author": "Neil", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100102039369122?comment_id=10100102042148552&reply_comment_id=10100102047732362", "anchor": "fb-10100102042148552_10100102047732362", "service": "fb", "text": "→ There\u2019s actually a company piloting that with some major brands in NYC. Forget the name...", "timestamp": "1563162510"}, {"author": "opted out", "source_link": "#", "anchor": "unknown", "service": "unknown", "text": "this user has requested that their comments not be shown here", "timestamp": "1563162440"}, {"author": "opted out", "source_link": "#", "anchor": "unknown", "service": "unknown", "text": "this user has requested that their comments not be shown here", "timestamp": "1563162694"}, {"author": "Ari", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100102039369122?comment_id=10100102047842142&reply_comment_id=10100102070357022", "anchor": "fb-10100102047842142_10100102070357022", "service": "fb", "text": "→ I had figured that for spirits, they just use the bottles up before replacing.", "timestamp": "1563193060"}, {"author": "Peter", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100102039369122?comment_id=10100102048011802", "anchor": "fb-10100102048011802", "service": "fb", "text": "If we went back to glass bottles for various beverages like soda, what\u2019s the environmental cost of transporting them back to the bottler? Also, what\u2019s the incremental cost of transporting full glass bottles instead of plastic?", "timestamp": "1563162887"}, {"author": "Can", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100102039369122?comment_id=10100102061579612", "anchor": "fb-10100102061579612", "service": "fb", "text": "But... freedom!!!!!!", "timestamp": "1563181545"}, {"author": "Ari", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100102039369122?comment_id=10100102070312112", "anchor": "fb-10100102070312112", "service": "fb", "text": "I suspect you need *many* container shapes to meet all the use cases. For starters, you need many sizes. But it gets worse. If you are carrying corrosive or toxic chemicals (ammonia, bleach, etc), the plastic bottles are much safer than glass since glass is liable to shatter when dropped.
There are other contexts where glass is the right call; you can boil things in glass, you can't with many plastics. Some things we bottle (alcohol) will react with some plastics.
My hunch is that we have good reasons for different shapes, even for the same volume and material. If you are preserving food (e.g. in mason jars), you want a fairly wide mouth; if you are storing liquids, you might want a narrow mouth for pouring. If you are selling the stuff commercially, you need to have a tamper-evident seal and things like cans or pry-off caps are very reasonable. If you are using the bottle domestically domestically, you don't want that.
And of course having different shapes makes things visually distinct, which is valuable and important in preventing mistakes -- some people have limited eyesight, some people pour themselves beverages in the dark when they are tired, etc etc.
And I think you mostly can't reuse containers as often as you like, anyway. Somebody turns in a generic glass bottle. What did it previously hold? Water? Wine? Weed killer? Methanol? Sulfuric Acid? For food use, it's very tempting to sidestep all those problems and insist on new containers.", "timestamp": "1563192993"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100102039369122?comment_id=10100102070312112&reply_comment_id=10100102071574582", "anchor": "fb-10100102070312112_10100102071574582", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Ari for your last point, my understanding is that a plain glass bottle can be completely industrially cleaned regardless of what someone was using it for before. Is that wrong?", "timestamp": "1563194391"}, {"author": "Ari", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100102039369122?comment_id=10100102070312112&reply_comment_id=10100102072652422", "anchor": "fb-10100102070312112_10100102072652422", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Jeff Kaufman I wouldn't know. But I would hate to be the lawyer in a product liability lawsuit when somebody got cancer and you shrug about bottles that previously held dioxin.", "timestamp": "1563195073"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100102039369122?comment_id=10100102070312112&reply_comment_id=10100102073725272", "anchor": "fb-10100102070312112_10100102073725272", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Ari I wonder how we deal with the risk of contaminated recycling today?
Prohibiting hazmat in reusable containers seems fine to me? Just like you shouldn't put that in the recycling today?", "timestamp": "1563195630"}, {"author": "Danner", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100102039369122?comment_id=10100102070312112&reply_comment_id=10100102076958792", "anchor": "fb-10100102070312112_10100102076958792", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Come on ari, you've seen the different bottles on different brands of the same products(how many shapes for bleach containers). There doesn't need to be ONE size for each bottle, use one unit of imagination. There could be 4-10+ different bottles per size, depending on the use, and they still could make the entire operation much much more efficient compared to the hundreds of different container shapes there are now.
'course, glass and plastics companies will complain, so we need folks to look at the larger benefits anyway.", "timestamp": "1563198089"}, {"author": "Ari", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100102039369122?comment_id=10100102070312112&reply_comment_id=10100102097023582", "anchor": "fb-10100102070312112_10100102097023582", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Jeff Kaufman My impression is that recycling and reuse are very different here. With reuse, we wash the container. With recycling, we melt it down and those have really different risk profiles.", "timestamp": "1563206353"}, {"author": "Alex", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100102039369122?comment_id=10100102105621352", "anchor": "fb-10100102105621352", "service": "fb", "text": "In Germany on my exchange trip in 2003 I remember all large (1.5L, 2L) bottles were reusable, with a deposit. Everyone had a closet full of crates that were some mix of full and empty soda and water bottles, and it was just part of the grocery store trip to return your empties. Soda tended to come in very durable plastic, water in glass. We played baseball with a plastic soda bottle as a bat for fun and could hardly dent it. Shapes varied between a couple options between brands, but people tend to buy the same stuff over and over so it worked out.
Small containers also had a hefty (0.25 Euro or so) deposit, so there was a strong incentive to return them too. Some were then recycled (cans), I don't know about the rest (glass bottles e.g.).", "timestamp": "1563211429"}, {"author": "Jim", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100102039369122?comment_id=10100102108520542", "anchor": "fb-10100102108520542", "service": "fb", "text": "This is premised on the assumption that the resource consumption of bottle production matters enough to be worth building institutions around reducing it. But the resource consumption is trivial, and the cost of building institutions is high.
As for glass vs. plastic, most things are plastic now because it's a much better material; the cost of moving the extra weight around, and the cleanup costs of the occasional broken glass container, are much larger than the cost of the plastic.", "timestamp": "1563213028"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100102039369122?comment_id=10100102108520542&reply_comment_id=10100102240875302", "anchor": "fb-10100102108520542_10100102240875302", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Jim I think you're right that the effort it takes to make a system like this would be better spent elsewhere. On the other hand, this would be better than the status quo and I think mostly funges against efforts like the one to ban straws.", "timestamp": "1563282908"}, {"author": "opted out", "source_link": "#", "anchor": "unknown", "service": "unknown", "text": "this user has requested that their comments not be shown here", "timestamp": "1563244948"}, {"author": "Michael", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100102039369122?comment_id=10100102272242442", "anchor": "fb-10100102272242442", "service": "fb", "text": "How about going back to when jams and jellies were sold in drinking glasses, with a crimp-on top. The glasses didn't need to be returned to stores, they got used as drinking glasses in many cases. And similar ways in which the package which is used for the product, becomes some other useful thing after the product is removed.", "timestamp": "1563300189"}]}