News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on A historian unpacks the origins of our plastic addiction. Parent comment

Re:A historian unpacks the origins of our plastic addiction by justin66 on Friday June 21, 2019 @09:13AM (#20242212)
> According to this paper, glass bottles need to be recycled 20 times in order to reach the same CO2 footprint as a PET bottle

This does not support the OP's case that "Glass is heavier and causes more CO2 emissions because of the increased energy use for transporting them."

There is going to be plenty of transport taking place during those 20 cycles of use and recycle. If the main energy cost of glass is in transport, as he asserted, that's only going to make it less competitive vs. plastic as the number of cycles increases.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:A historian unpacks the origins of our plastic addiction by olejorgenb on Friday June 21, 2019 @02:17PM (#20245021)
The quote is inaccurate. The paper talks about glass bottle _reuse_.

As long as transport + washing cost of glass bottles are less than production + transport cost of plastic bottles there will be some number of reuses that make glass the winner.

[ Parent | on HN ]