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Glass, can or plastic?

Choosing the most ecological container is harder than choosing what to drink

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 19/11/2012 (1437 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

You could stand in front of the coolers in a convenience store for ages, trying to choose a beverage from the ever-expanding selection of sodas, energy drinks, juices and waters.


Pepsi has a bottle made entirely of plant material.


Pepsi has a bottle made entirely of plant material.

The container -- and I'm not talking about the reusable water bottle you always carry -- is a major part of your beverage footprint.



Glass bottles, for instance, are 40 per cent lighter today than they were 20 years ago, which means it takes less fuel and produces fewer emissions to transport them.

Ditto plastic. A few years ago an empty half-litre water bottle weighed 22 grams. Now, it's 8.5. (Soda bottles are heavier so they can withstand the carbonation.)

As for cans, today's models have a carbon footprint 43 per cent smaller than those in 1993.




We'll start with Lynn Bragg, president of the Glass Packaging Institute.


Adding recycled glass to the mix means manufacturers' furnaces can run at lower temperatures. And for every six tonnes of recycled glass used, the carbon dioxide emissions drop a tonne.





So weight is where plastic bottles win out, said Dennis Sabourin, executive director of the National Association for PET Container Resources -- PET being the short version of the plastic resin polyethylene terephthalate.





Like plastic, aluminum cans are lightweight -- so they have a smaller transportation footprint. And because they stack tightly, there's less wasted space when they're shipped.


Like bottles, cans are endlessly recyclable, can into can into can. Plus, making a can from an old can instead of the raw material uses five per cent of the energy and generates five per cent of the emissions. (Although, when new material is needed, it's bauxite that is mined overseas, with most of it coming from Australia.)


So perhaps not surprisingly, a lot of aluminum is recycled. Today's typical can contains 68 per cent recycled content.


But the lining of aluminum cans contains bisphenol A.


Craft brewers -- such as Sly Fox, based in Pottstown, Pa., -- are starting to can their beers instead of bottling them. For them, the cans work out to be more eco-friendly, said SF brewmaster Brian O'Reilly. They're also cheaper. And you can take a can places where bottles aren't allowed.




Coca-Cola now makes a "PlantBottle" from 30 per cent plants. Although some enviro groups didn't like that the plants were sugar cane coming all the way from Brazil, a company spokeswoman said the crop is "rain-fed" on "abundant arable land" (in other words, no rainforests were felled) and fertilized with organics. Coca-Cola has joined with four other companies to accelerate development of a bottle made totally from plants.


But selection can reflect your personal concerns.


Distrust bisphenol A? Go for the bottle.

If you do go for the bottle, go for local contents, to lessen the shipping footprint. Conversely, if you have to get something from far away, get it in a can or in plastic.


-- The Philadelphia Inquirer


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