Glass or plastic: Which is Better For The Environment? - Going Zero ...

Glass or plastic: Which is Better For The Environment?
September 13, 2019 | Kathryn Kellogg
Glass or plastic, which one is actually better for our environment? Well, we are going to explain glass vs plastic so you can make an informed decision on which one to use.
It’s no secret that there are lots of factories making new glass bottles, jars, and so much more every day. Plus, there are just as many factories making plastic too. We are going to break it down for you and answer your questions like can glass be recycled, is glass biodegradable, and is plastic a natural resource.
glass vs plastic
When you look up zero waste, you’re bound to notice tons and tons of pictures of glass jars everywhere. From the trash jar to the jars lining our pantries, glass is pretty popular in the zero waste community.
But what’s our obsession with glass? Is it really so much better for the environment than plastic? Is glass biodegradable or eco-friendly?
Plastic tends to get a really bad rep from environmentalists – that’s got a lot to do with the fact only 9 percent of it is recycled. That said, there’s so much more to think about in terms of what goes into manufacturing and recycling both glass and plastic, not to mention its afterlife.
Which is truly the eco-friendliest choice when you get down to it, glass or plastic? Well, perhaps the answer isn’t as clear cut as you may think.
Is glass or plastic more environmentally friendly?
glass:
Let’s start by analyzing every zero waster’s beloved material: Glass. First, it’s important to note that glass is endlessly recyclable, back to its original use.
It never loses its quality and purity, no matter how many times it’s recycled…. but is it actually being recycled?
the truth about glass
First up, making new glass requires sand. While we have tons of sand on beaches, deserts, and under the ocean, we’re using it faster than the planet can replenish it.
We use sand more than we use oil, and only a specific kind of sand can be used to get the job done (no, desert sand can’t be used). Here are some more concerning issues:
Mostly, sand is harvested from riverbeds and seabeds.
Taking sand out of the natural environment also disrupts the ecosystem, considering microorganisms live on it which feed the base of the food chain.
Removing sand from the seabed leaves shore communities open to flooding and erosion.
Since we need sand to create new glass, you can see where this would be an issue.
more problems with glass
Another problem with glass? Glass is heavier than plastic, and breaks much easier during transit.
This means it produces more emissions in transportation than plastic and costs more to transport.
can glass be recycled?
Yet another thing to consider is most glass isn’t actually recycled. In fact, only 33 percent of waste glass is recycled in America.
When you consider 10 million metric tons of glass is disposed of every year in America, that’s not a very high recycling rate. But why is recycling so low? Here are a few reasons:
There are many reasons glass recycling is so low: Glass put into the recycling bin is used as a cheap landfill cover to keep costs low.
Consumers participating in “wish-cycling” where they toss non-recyclables into the recycling bin and contaminate the entire bin.
Colored glass can only be recycled and melted down with like-colors.
Windows and Pyrex bakeware are not recyclable because of the way it’s manufactured to withstand high temperatures.
is glass biodegradable?
Last but not least, glass takes one million years to decompose in the environment, perhaps even more in a landfill.
In total, that’s about four major problems with glass that impact the environment.
Now, let’s analyze the lifecycle of glass bit closer.
how glass is made:
Glass is made from all-natural resources, such as sand, soda ash, limestone and recycled glass.
However, it is important to note that we’re running out of the sand that’s used to make glass in the first place.
Worldwide, we go through 50 billion tons of sand every year. That is twice the amount produced by every river in the world.
Once these raw materials are harvested, they’re transported to a batch house where they are inspected and then sent to the furnace for melting, where they’re heated to 2600 to 2800 degrees Fahrenheit.
Afterwards, they go through conditioning, forming, and the finishing process before becoming the final product.
Once the final product is created, it’s transported so it can be washed and sterilized, then transported again to stores for sale or use.
Once it comes to its end of life, it’s (hopefully) collected and recycled.
Unfortunately, each year only one-third of the roughly 10 million metric tons of glass that Americans throw away is recycled.
The rest goes to a landfill.
When glass is collected and recycled, it has to begin this process of being transported, going through batch preparation, and everything else that follows again.
emissions + energy:
As you can imagine, this entire process of making glass, especially using virgin materials, takes up a lot of time, energy, and resources.
Also, the amount of transporting the glass has to go through adds up, too, creating more emissions in the long run.
A lot of the furnaces used to create glass also run on fossil fuels, thus creating a lot of pollution.
The total fossil fuel energy consumed to make glass in North America, primary energy demand (PED), averaged to 16.6 megajoule (MJ) per 1 kilogram (kg) of container glass produced.
plastic:
The zero waste community has a habit of criminalizing plastic. But is it really as bad as they say?
Let’s take a look, shall we?
is plastic a natural resource?
First, most plastic (not counting the bio-plastics) are petroleum-based, thus making the materials non-renewable and unsustainable to harvest.
Drilling for oil has caused many problems, including disturbing land and marine ecosystems.
Also, dealing with oil tends to result in oil spills, which contaminate soil and water and may cause horrendous fires and explosions.
carbon footprint of plastic
The carbon footprint of plastic is pretty hard to ignore.
From the moment raw materials are made into plastic to their disposal, plastic emits carbon dioxide.
In fact, the emissions from plastic in 2015 were equivalent to nearly 1.8 billion metric tons of CO2.
It doesn’t help the factories used to create plastic also run on fossil fuels and produce emissions as well.
To be fair though, factories that produce glass also create emissions and run on fossil fuels for the most part.
can plastic be recycled?
Yes! This is another problem!? Only 9 percent of plastic is actually recycled.
Considering we’ve made 8.5 billion metric tons of it since large scale production began, that’s a very small recycle rate.
The glass recycling rate is 33 percent, which isn’t fantastic compared to other countries (there’s a 90 percent glass recycling rate in Switzerland, Germany and other European countries), but still higher than plastic.
When it is recycled, plastic can only be downcycled, meaning it becomes an item of lesser quality.
It will never be the same item again.
Eventually, this leads it to become a waste item that is no longer recyclable and destined to end up in a landfill, or the environment.
is plastic biodegradable?
Plastic takes 450+ years to decompose in the environment, and 1000 years in a landfill.
Compared to glass, which takes 1 million years to break down, these numbers may seem kind of low.
However, it’s important to remember that, unlike glass, plastic leeches toxic chemicals into the environment as time passes.
Plastic doesn’t truly break down either, but instead becomes microplastics that pollute our waterways and even contaminate our very soil and the air we breathe.
Altogether, that’s about six major problems with plastic that impact the environment.
Let’s look at plastic’s life cycle a little bit closer.
raw materials used in making plastic:
First, oil and natural gas are the major raw materials used to manufacture plastics.
Plastic production often begins by treating components of crude oil or natural gas in a “cracking process” where these components are converted into hydrocarbon monomers, such as ethylene and propylene.
Even more, processing leads to various other monomers, such as styrene, ethylene glycol, terephthalic acid, vinyl chloride, and several others.
These monomers are then chemically bonded into chains called polymers.
The different combinations of monomers yield various different kinds of plastics, all with a wide range of characteristics and properties.
There are seven major plastics that are used widely such as Polyethylene Terephthalate (PETE), High Density Polyethylene (HDPE), Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC), Low Density Polyethylene (LDPE), Polypropylene (PP), Polystyrene (PS) and other plastics (ex: nylon).
plastic emissions + energy:
All these different plastics serve different functions, though some are easier to recycle than others.
As you can imagine, creating all those plastics takes a lot of energy and resources.
In fact, in 2007, researchers Peter Gleick and Heather Cooley estimated that satisfying the existing bottle water demand alone required the energy equivalent of between 32 and 54 million barrels of oil.
And that’s just bottled water! This means producing plastic bottles each year releases more greenhouse gas emissions than over a million cars on the road.
From production to the end of life, plastics have a surprisingly carbon-intense life cycle.
When they’re transformed into products and transported to market, they emit greenhouse gases either directly or via the energy required to accomplish them.
Even after you dispose of plastic, be it through dumping, incinerating, recycling and composting (for certain bio-plastics), all release carbon dioxide.
I try to opt for packaging that contains mostly recycled content because are we really recycling if we don’t buy products made from recycled content?
And, you should definitely reuse your glass bottles and jars!
In closing, refer to this post as often as you need to! We have answered many questions like “can glass be recycled, is glass biodegradable, and is plastic a natural resource?” but feel free to let us know if you have other questions.
Guest Post: Ariana Palmieri is the founder of Greenify-Me.com, a blog dedicated to zero waste living and sustainability. Her work has been featured on MindBodyGreen, Green Matters, The Penny Hoarder and several other publications. Get her free e-book “10 Ways to Reduce Trash” by signing up to her newsletter and learn how to reduce your waste today.
Without looking at the numbers, I think you can be sure that the transportation footprint of glass is much higher. When we order packaging for our food (we produce fermented foods), the glass is brought by a truck, and the box is big and heavy. When we order plastic bags, the postman brings the box, which is much smaller, and much less heavy. 50 packaging units of plastic fit into a package the size of a book, 50 glass jars with the same capacity volume are much, much bigger and heavier.
I’m a hairdresser and I’m now encouraging my clients to bring their shampoo bottles back to me for refills instead of buying new ones each time. The bottles are all bio plastics aswell and the products are all vegan ?. Maybe this is something that more hair salons could offer ?
I’m very impressed with your research, and that you went into this in such depth.
"Recycling is not the answer" certainly holds true. Unfortunately, even for those of us trying to help the planet, sometimes we don’t have a lot of options for buying package-free, or for recycling all items. What we CAN do, however, is to do what we CAN do, and to keep educating our friends, neighbors, family, and community; to keep asking for better options of stores, companies, and cities. I have no bulk or plastic free options for many items (like grains). But have started making my first stop the local farmers market, I avoid the packaging I can avoid (onions loose, for example), and I, like you, choose glass over plastic. Hopefully as more of us do this we are sending a message to companies about what we want and conditions will improve. I’m taking the trouble now to collect the "plastic film" that we have not been able to avoid and take it to a recycling drop off, and I am trying to spend one morning a week making things from scratch to avoid more packaging and, well, …prepared food is usually not of the quality of what we can make from scratch (think crackers, cookies, bread, sauces).
I had a couple of thoughts reading your numbers that perhaps you can answer. When you say only 9% of household plastic gets recycled and 33% of glass, do we know the causes of this? First, how big is the area researched… is it just the U.S.? Second, how much is because of lack of local recycling programs and how much of it is because of households not being compliant? Third, some plastics are not commonly recyclable, as are some types of glass. To give two examples, in our community, even though the type of plastic is recyclable, our community won’t accept clear plastic berry containers, because the facility claims they "explode" in the melting process. (hm… they can’t shred it?) And as for glass… a glass artist friend of mine explained that window glass, drinking glass, and bottle glass can’t be mixed because of different melting points. When you say 33% of household glass is not recycled… is any portion of the total, again glass which is not accepted in recycling programs?
The reason I’m curious about this, is it tells us where we need to get working! I see my neighbors’ recycling bins out every week and on occasion I have had the cheek to talk to a neighbor when I notice they are not recycling (um, true… it sounds awful, i know, but we wound up friends! It’s all how you bring it up.) If instead it is lack of recycling programs (or adequate ones) in many communities, or perhaps in institutions (schools, businesses, restaurants), then we need a different approach. I also hear that many times, particularly for plastic, there are not enough buyers for the raw, recycled material to make a recycling program profitable. What should our next steps be? Perhaps this could be another article. I really value your opinion.
I have used this website numerous times to educate others on the benefits of going zero waste, but wanted to point out that your section on the creation of glass might be incorrect… According to https://www.quora.com/Can-glass-be-made-from-desert-sand and other sites, I think that maybe you can… Can you please elaborate and maybe update this article? Thank you and keep up the great work, sincerely an 8th grader.
Great article. I work for Ripple Glass a Kansas City, Missouri based glass recycling company. We accept all kinds of glass. I believe your information is based on all the glass being recycled ending it’s life at a bottle manufacturer. The glass cullet we produce 95% goes into fiberglass insulation manufacture. This type of cullet allows for use of different types of glass to be mixed.
Good article in a very complex area. You have compared glass and plastic but you are not clear which is better. Which is better for the environment – a 1 litre water bottle made from glass or made from plastic allowing for different weights, recyclability etc.?
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Thanks for this deep dive! It’s really helpful. I have been concerned for awhile that glass has become almost trendy without considering that it’s only eco-friendly if it can be used over and over again, which largely isn’t happening!