Returnable bottles vs. recycling

You are right. Very little glass gets "recycled" into more glass. Some used glass is used as "cullet" which primes the glass furnaces but that's about it.

 

Haha, I love this debate because it is so important, and the level of ignorance is so great.

Keeping glass out of the waste stream is economically valuable to the municipalities, that is obvious, since the major cost to the municipalities is to send waste to landfills, large costs charged by the ton.

Green glass, properly recycled, is still more expensive to bottlers than purchasing new green glass.

And this is the one that is the industry secret, but I know because I am in the industry. If your "recycling program" doesn't separate by color, the glass does not get made into new glass. Chances are instead of a waste landfill it all goes into a clean fill. So, if your municipality doesn't separate, it doesn't save any new glass from being made.

Cans recycling though is tremendously important for many reasons, and if you throw away aluminum cans instead of recycling you are an enemy of the earth. Right now less than 35% of aluminum in cans is from recycled aluminum, we need to bring that up near to 100%.

 

Aluminium is the one thing which is worth recycling because of the sheer amount of energy it takes to produce it.There are question marks about the overall benefits of recycling in general. Our local glass collection point does have separate receptacles for clear, green , blue and brown glass.Some may be reused but at least it can be ground up to take up less space in landfill sites.