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A comment on Why are glasses so expensive? The eyewear industry prefers to keep that blurry. Parent comment

Re:Why are glasses so expensive? The eyewear industry prefer... by sitharus on Wednesday January 23, 2019 @06:30PM (#18984325)
Post-consumer paper can be recycled in to some forms of low-density card that doesn't require high quality pulp. Egg cartons come to mind, and as a percentage in some packaging, newsprint and sanitary papers. Post-consumer paper cannot easily be recycled in to anything resembling printer paper due to the contaminants. Pre-consumer paper is recycled heavily as it's of known quality.

I'm not aware of any plastics that are recycled in to the same form. I know that PET (1) and HDPE (2) are recycled in to fibres.

It's a similar story to glass, certainly where I live a large amount of glass is recycled in to crushed aggregate rather than new bottles. The energy costs of cleaning don't make it worthwhile.

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Re:Why are glasses so expensive? The eyewear industry prefer... by samatman on Wednesday January 23, 2019 @08:38PM (#18985237)
Glass bottles used to be reused, which is the responsible thing to do.

Consumers didn’t like it because scratches accumulate on the outside of the bottles.

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Re:Why are glasses so expensive? The eyewear industry prefer... by ConceptJunkie on Friday January 25, 2019 @03:23PM (#19002132)
I always thought it was a shame that we stopped doing that, but plastic has taken over pretty much for all the glass bottles that used to be recycled.
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