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Re:Recycling was a lie to sell more plastic, recycling indus... by treis on Thursday October 08, 2020 @12:12AM (#24715705)
Reusing washed glass bottles for perishables like milk can be a public health risk. It's hard to get the cleaning process to the point where when the stars align for that 1 out of 100,000 bottles it still gets sterilized.
Re:Recycling was a lie to sell more plastic, recycling indus... by adrianN on Thursday October 08, 2020 @12:49AM (#24715935)
Until I see statistics proving the opposite I don't believe that. Washing bottles hot enough to kill germs really is not hard and we used to reuse lots of glass bottles.
Re:Recycling was a lie to sell more plastic, recycling indus... by bluGill on Thursday October 08, 2020 @09:37AM (#24718976)
Getting glass hot enough to kill microbes isn't hard, but it does take a lot of energy. Microbes will attach to the glass and use that as a heat sink, so just hot water isn't enough, you have to use enough to heat the glass.
Re:Recycling was a lie to sell more plastic, recycling indus... by treis on Thursday October 08, 2020 @01:18PM (#24721384)
It's actually tremendously hard to do that on an industrial scale. We still get listeria outbreaks even with pasteurized milk and new bottles. Adding in a source of contaimination is going to make it that much harder.

The issue isn't getting bottles hot enough to kill germs. It's doing so in a way that doesn't aerosolize the bacteria and preventing all the other ways cross contaimination can occur.

Re:Recycling was a lie to sell more plastic, recycling indus... by chimprich on Thursday October 08, 2020 @11:59AM (#24720361)
If you pour a glass of milk at home, do you throw the glass away afterwards?
Re:Recycling was a lie to sell more plastic, recycling indus... by treis on Thursday October 08, 2020 @01:49PM (#24721720)
That's not the risk. The risk is introducing harmful bacteria into a bottle and then having it reproduce for some days before someone drinks it. Since you're not storing milk in the glass it's not an issue if it isn't completely sanitized.