Returnable bottles vs. recycling

I am old enough to recall returnable cases. This was great! No garbage, no waste.

 

As long as goes in the recycling bin and not the landfill

 

It is very important to recycle all you can and around here it's easy enough. They give you a bin and you just put it out on the right day. I don't want to be bothered to return for the deposit so I always recycle.

 

More efforts and resources need to be put into expanding recycling problems (and maintaining existing programs). Recycling is a concept that the general population can actually understand. Asking people to return cases, get things refilled, etc. is pushing the envelope. If there is a clearly labeled bin, that goes out on the street corner on a specific day, and is picked up by the proper people, it works. Anything else is a long shot. Bottom line, get it in a recycling bin. If your city/town/state doesn't have recycling bins then it's time for a little community organizing. Just my three cents.

 

Returnable bottles wasted a ton of water/energy to get them clean and after numerous uses they would have to be crushed and recycled anyway.

 

Cleaning and sanitizing was a problem. The bottles also had to handled. In a modern brewery, a pallet of bottles is placed into position, and it is loaded onto the line with an automated unloader.

Another thing to consider is that bottles are not a standard size and shape, even for the ubiquitous 12 oz. bottle (I have a lot of bottles for homebrew, so I have noticed this). Height variations could cause problems on a high speed line.

The current one way recyclable bottles are lightweight compared to a reusable bottle. This saves money and energy in shipping. The one way glass bottles get crushed, and the glass is reheated and poured to make new bottles.

 

I've been returning my bottles for 10 years, is this something new?

 

Which are you doing? Returning for a deposit, or returning the bottles for reuse by the brewery.

I remember when almost all bottles were returned, to end up at the brewery to be reused. Always thought it was not so good when guys would use the bottle as an ash tray, and put the cigarette butt in the bottle. Yuck.

 

In this country at least, green glass isn't recycled.This is for two reasons;one is that because of the quantity of imported bottled wines there is a surplus and the second is that it's actually cheaper to manufacture this quality of glass from scratch than to collect, clean, delabel and then melt it for further use.
What happens is that the bottles are reduced to powder , some is used for various purposes (one use was in road building) the rest goes into landfill.

 

This is one reason why I like cans and growlers.

 

Problem is, breweries and soda makers didn't switch to throwaways because they liked to waste resources, the switch happened because people didn't return the bottles in sufficient volume. I can recall back in the day seeing scads of returnables sitting around in garages, basements etc waiting to be sent back.

 

Yeah, according to USBA Brewers Almanac figures, "One way" bottles only began to outsell "Returnable" bottles around 1970 - at around the same time that canned beer first reached more than 50% of packaged beer sales (that does not count draught beer, which, of course, is also a "Returnable").

As "Flashy's" confusion notes, what were once called "Returnables" are now more properly referred to "Refillable" bottles, ever since the Mandatory Deposit Laws of the 1970's in several states created bottles that were returned to the retailers for deposit, but not re-used by brewers. Those Deposit laws were primarily aimed at litter reduction and forcing the recycling of glass and aluminum rather than taking up landfill space.

Most figures show that, in the US, the expense and transportation-related pollution involved in returning empties to brewers, and the energy, large water usage, and chemical waste water disposal problems at the brewery, might actually mean that throw-aways are more "green" than refillables. They are no doubt more financially "green" given the added labor costs involved all along the reverse supply chain in the old system.

 

I doubt that any breweries reuse empty bottles nowadays (legally I'm unsure if they are permitted to do so), but if they did, there are some breweries that would play hell getting their own damn labels off!

 

The Beer Institute's Brewers Almanac (pg 13) has listed "Refillable" bottles as having 0% of the US market since 2007. As late as 1981, they still accounted for 12% of all beer sold, though (as shown in the Almanac's page 14) the percentage varied greatly from state to state.

A number of brewers have discontinued them in recent years (The Lion, Yuengling) and apparently Straub, the last oldline brewer using them is supposedly also giving them up because of cost (they had to pay for new molds for the bottle manufacturer because no other customers bought the bottles anymore) and trouble getting their empties back. If a bottle isn't reused a number of times it is not cost-effective for the brewer to buy the more expensive reusable bottles.

As noted above by several posters, "returnable/refillable" bottles once dominated the bottled beer segment of the US market - there's no prohibition against them in any state that I ever heard of.

 

In my community, glass bottles get crushed and the glass fragments are used for road base.

 

Roads, insulation, countertops, tile and bricks are all using recycled glass.

 

I'll agree that if they're going into the trash that's a bad thing. I'm confused why you think bottles going into the recycling bin is a bad thing though, please explain.

 

The bottle washing machines are too big and expensive for small breweries. Big breweries would have to charge too much for people to return them, which increases the price on competitive shelves. But it would be nice to see less waste. Last week I saw a garbage bag of beer bottles in a dumpster which was right next to the recycling bin.