Why the Glass Bottle FAILED
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- čas přidán 30. 01. 2024
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Not that long ago, Coca Cola (and most drink companies at the time) sold their beverages in glass containers. These bottles would get used, washed then reused over and over in an endless glass cycle. This dreamlike utopia is long gone today… and Coca Cola killed it.
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Script: Estelle Walton
Editor: Melody David
Lead Editor: Kirsten Stanley
Project Manager: Lurana McClure Rodríguez
Host: Levi Hildebrand
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Who killed the glass bottle...? 🤔💭
,,Die, little glass Balla fool! [starts blasting off at some glass bottles] 💥 Cap your a~~! 💥 And your a~~! 💥 You want some too? Ice cold, baby! Oh, I knew I was the Chosen One!!" 😇
(Melvin "Big Smoke" Harris shooting at glass bottles as target practice, Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, 2004)
Aluminum replaced steel soda cans in the early '70s. I didn't see a plastic food/beverage bottle until very late '70s and glass was always the choice for soda. Until Coke got their asses sued off in the '80s because someone miss handled their 32 oz. soda bottle on a hot summer's day (many hours riding around in the trunk of a car) and dropped them causing them to burst rather violently.
Hi you refered to two videos i wouldn't mind watching however- i can't find your link to them.
Why you didn't mention the Aluminium cans ?
@@dawfydd Links in the description!
glasss bottles just look better than plastic idk how they died
And taste better..
@@terron.w921 EXACTLY!
@@terron.w921agree
@@terron.w921it's true
@@terron.w921bro, don't eat bottles..
1. They feel better (Expensive)
2. They taste better
3. No micro plastics problem (Healthy)
4. Reusable
5. Better for the environment
I love European stuff and those laws for apple too is true
How many times does a glass bottle need to be reused to be better than plastic bottles?
Agree! pop and beer taste sooo much better from a glass bottle. even from a can tastes better than from plastic
but they break
@@NAEVAN238 Glass bottles are surprisingly tough.
@@LutraLovegood It depends on what you mean by "better".
Here at my city in Mexico, buying a glass bottled soda costs like 5 pesos more than plastic, but if you're also returning another bottle it's like 10 pesos cheaper than a plastic bottle of the same size, by your 3rd soda you're already saving 10 pesos a bottle. Also this makes buying a 1lt glass bottle cheaper than a 750ml plastic bottle.
Same here in sri lanka glass bottle is 90 rupees while plastic one is 120 rupees
Similar to here in Brazil, that said we now also have returnable 2 liter plastic bottles, those end up being even cheaper and pay for the price of the bottle in 2 returns already.
In US states close to the Mexican border, we enjoy Mexican Coke, Fanta, and other Coca-Cola products.
Same for Argentina, we have less commonly returnable 1lt glass coke bottle but also 2lt plastic returnable one and they are cheaper than the full discard alternative.
This is because the product is something like 98% (an underestimate) markup and transport, so they really can charge whatever they like. Also, save even more money by not buying the sugar acid water to begin with!
Another thing was glass bottles required a bottle opener to pry off the metal cap. Convenience stores and vending machines had one attached to the side of the cooler from which you pulled your bottled drink. Many people had one on their keychain. Of course, once you uncapped it, there was no recapping it. Though this wasn't a big problem, as it didn't take as long to consume since they ranged from only 6 to 12 oz, rather than the 16-20 oz plastic bottles common today.
Those bottle openers were called church keys.
you can easily recap a glass bottle, it ain't as easy to seal it though
@@arjix8738 I meant as far as opening and closing it repeatedly and effortlessly while on the go. Sure, you could reattach the cap if you had a pair of pliers or something similar handy. I don't remember them being possible to squeeze easily by hand without a tool. Then again, I was still young when their use was fading out.
mexicans open bottles with almost anything and seal them off with napkins or paper towels lol
some glass bottles today has sealable metal cap. for some reason i've only ever seen it on those tiny glass bottles that's only the size of your hand
BTW remember when glass bottles made the beverage taste soooo good? Especially when it is nice and icy with the icy sweats dripping off the bottle. Shame how we chose the convenience of plastic over glass.
It's more complicated than that. Glass weights more and when you total everything, there is often more emissions from glass transport and cleaning than there is using plastic
@hughjassol-0-
plastic bag drinks on top
That was Gatorade in a glass bottle for me.
@@pegaseg70 theoretically the emmission point could be false if we ran on renewables and nuclear power. additionally, glass has the benefit of not calcifying in the stomachs of sea life or degrading into micro plastic that will also probably start calcifying inside living things at some point.
Drip...? 🤔💭
,,He a motherf**kin' trip, trip, sailor of the ship, ship
When he make it drip, drip kiss him on the lip, lip
That's the kind of dude I was lookin' fo'
And, yes, you'll get slapped if you're lookin' ho!"
(Nicki Minaj - Super Bass)
I'm 67 yrs old, a soda was 10 cents, 5 cent deposit included, kids would pick up bottles off road sides, and bushes. Return Soda bottles and beer bottles, for deposits. 4 empties get you 3 sodas, and a nickel.
yep i did that on the walk home from school pick up sota bottles and stop at the corner store and get a soda.
I used to buy returnable 48ct cases of beer. Dirt cheap, $5.00 if you returned your old case intact. If one of my idiot friends broke a beer bottle, I'd charge him $5.00 because it was going to cost me $10.00 for my next case.
2 cent for a pop bottle 5 cent for a quart beer bottle, 25 cent for a one gallon milk bottle. Handling was more than the cost to make a plastic bottle.
4 empties at 5 cent deposit each would be a total of 20 cents, enough for 2 sodas period. I do wish we still had the deposits.
Your math is wrong
Another point about the transition from glass to plastic with soft drinks (coke, pepsi, et al), it cost the same to the consumer. Think about that for just a second, it cost the same as buying a coke in a glass bottle without having a bottle to exchange. When the switch to plastic happened they ALL got away with a price hike that no one questioned. So, lets say a coke used to cost $1 (price varied with time and country) and you would get 30c back when you returned the bottle (again, varied depending on location and year), once the shift to plastic happened coke still cost $1 but you got nothing back. That is 30c more profit for Coca-Cola right at the point of sale (using these numbers) and that is before all the savings on rebottling, cleaning, collecting etc. Almost a 30% price hike that very few noticed and even fewer complained about.
I want to also point out back when they had bottle they had more local plants which reduced the cost to ship those bottles around.
Yes as a consumer I love that squishy feeling of cheap plastic when I open a bottle and the pressure keeping it in form disappears and you nearly spill half of the bottle because your grip tightens while the bottle deforms in your hands .. pure bliss.
actually about 43% profit gain for coca cola (143% of 70c ≈ $1)
Glass bottle coca cola never fully went away, and they cost a lot more than can/plastic coca cola
Those are some extremely high prices you're quoting. Drinks were only 25 to 35 cents when plastic started coming out. The deposit was 2 cents, rising to 5 cents at the very end. But consumers were making too much money to be bothered with a 5 cent deposit. The plastic bottles were around 50 cents when I first bought one. Now I can get a 16 ounce plastic bottle of Pepsi at the grocery store for 50 cents most of the time. The regular price is about $1 now, so I only buy them when they are on sale for 50 cents. Perhaps you live in California or some other place with outrageous prices. BTW, eggs are only $1.19 a dozen here. I'm in northeastern NC.
There's a dairy here in IL that uses glass bottles, and the milk itself just straight up tastes better. There's a 3$ deposit, but you get credited when you return them.
Oberweiss?
God I miss Oberweiss
They just declared bankruptcy. Hopefully they find a new buyer.
I remember as a kid in North Carolina (1960s) scouring the neighborhood for empty bottles to take to the grocery store to supplement my weekly allowance - 2 cents for a regular bottle and 5 cents for the larger ones!
nothing cleans up trash like child labour.
i remember collecting plastic bottles back in my days and taking to the store to get some candy or something
I had a paper route. I would collect so many bottles along the route that It was a big boost for my $$ compare to the papers we delivered.
its just the elderly nowadays
Same in Kansas 4 empties get 3 sodas and a nickel, look for bottles and return again.
Did you take your money and give it to a man named Curtis Lowe?
Back in the 70's we used to always get 10 cents back from each bottle at the 7-11.
Glass bottle crafts were antique-like, really amusing how they devolve from high quality to the lowest possible
in germany there werry popular for botteling stuf like lemonade and whater and we geht 20 cents per bottel back
Glass soda bottles didn't take over the smaller sized bottles until the late 90s. As recently as the 70s, I recall buying 2liter glass bottles of soda. But by the end of the 70s, those were a thing of the past. But 16oz bottles were still very common into the late 90s.
But they stopped the deposit thing in my state (PA) before I was even born, which was 1970.
It was only 5 cents where I lived.
Here in Colombia the glass bottles are still in use, ppl mainly use them in restaurants or just buy them in a nearby shop and return them later
Here in Australia, most supermarkets have glass bottled Pepsi and Coke. It is however prohibitively expensive, you are paying vastly more for glass. $8 AUD a litre versus getting a large plastic bottle at $2 AUD a litre. They only have smaller bottles as well, likely increasing the price. It is a luxury item they keep a small supply of.
I believe you are correct, guess I'll have to stick with my Sprunk.
gta speedrunner
I believe you are incorrect, guess that's just your opinion. Perchance. Plastic bottles just feel more lighter than Glass bottles. Sure it's water but it's heavier now. They are something nice and not expensive. Ignoring that now huh? Nick, would you rather have a glass screen or a plastic screen... see? Also you only get small amounts of micro plastics from the plastic bottles. I can't even eat the plastic bottle for griefer 's sake. I guess that's what someone who plagiarized from the viper rambles podcast would spew.
Glass bottle (or aluminium cans/ plastic bottles) recyling is very standard in Germany and many different countries. Basically there are almost none drinking containers that get thrown out (except maybe wine bottles and similar). It is very common to buy beverages like juices, water, beer etc. and return it after consumption. You get between 25 ct and 8 ct per container (dependig on material) at EVERY supermarket.
Asia and middle east and Africa and most of latin America don’t do any of this
Same in Norway. 2 kr (0.2 eur) for smaller than 0.5 Liters, and 3 kr (0.3 eur) above it.
Glass bottles are unfortunately not refundable anymore. Still recyclable though.
Wine bottles go into generic clear or colored glass recycling in my country at least, as opposed to going to the beverage pant/pfant system.
Same in the Slovakia and Czechia and probably a lot of other European countries.
@@Call-me-Al its the same in Germany, we have containers that you can throw the glass bottles that are not returnable to a store. Most of the time there are 3 containers next to each other, one for white, one for brown and one for green glass.
Mexico still has returnable glass bottles for beer in several sizes for each brand.
It works so well that it is the cheapest way to buy beer and pretty much every bottle gets returned , usually when you are buying more beer
Also for coke, you return them when you buy another bottle, which sadly is pretty much every day for most families.
Yeah my family still does this
I believe that's the case in all of latam tbh
@@Sadako2602 wdym sadly?, that's the best way in comparison to...buying yet another non-reusable plastic bottle everyday
@@annierminxpretty sure they meant that it's sad that so much soda is consumed instead of healthier alternatives
I am no supporter of one-time use plastics. But there was a lot of broken glass which caused a lot of flats when I cycled during the glass bottle period. Now, there's a buch of plastic trash which looks bad and is bad for the environment. But I rarely get flats when I cycle.
In Mexico we still have glass bottles of Coke and other drinks.
And we don't have that problem
@@aragonmoralesfaustodavid5548 Good to hear.
I never had flats with my bicycle during the early 70s when drinks were all in glass bottles. Most bottles were recycled back to the drink companies.
I was born and raised in Oregon, I have never known a life without bottle returns. We used to have a cabin in Washington (where there was no deposit at the time) so we would bring bottles and cans back to return them in Oregon. Nowadays we have bottle return machines like the ones shown in the video in most major grocery stores. And if you don't want to go back to the store, we have dedicated bottle return facilities, with 10-20 of these machines, and get up to $50 back a day. What is kinda sad but nice at the same time- this motivates homeless individuals to gather up bottles to take them to get the refund money, making our state cleaner. This is especially evident when you go to our neighbors south of us in California, and see how many bottles are strewn across the sides of roads.
It kinda passed quietly last year, but Canada just banned 90% of all single use plastics in grocery stores by 2026 or something to that tone. So expect a lot more bottles, jars, and bring your own containers up here. Not sure if Future Proof is going to do a video on it? They've even announced a pilot here in Ottawa last week!
That ban got overturned by the Federal Court, rightfully so.
"The Federal Court in Canada has overturned the country's ban on single-use plastics, deeming the policy “unreasonable and unconstitutional.” The court found that the classification of plastics in the cabinet order was too broad to be listed as toxic under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act.".
I'm all for politicians taking action, but I have a friend living in rural Canada and they told me (unrelated to this planned ban) they really don't have a return or recycling system for glass. If so, the ban would just result in a lot of glass bottles getting thrown into the normal trash and ending up in landfills. Probably still better for the environment longterm, because no microplastics, but at the same time a huge waste of resources.
@@DRT813 The thing is, if plastic was actually forbidden for bottles, count on it, a recycling system would be in place in no time. Plus, you can prescribe that also: Just make it so that whoever sells bottles has to take them back and give the customer a deposit (usually a few cents). Works fine in Germany.
@@DRT813 My understanding is the ban is also coupled with federal support to ensure that businesses can adapt to new systems for packaging and waste management before the ban takes affect. Otherwise yes, the problem that you describe is very much a possibility.
What works in Germany might not work in Canada, because we have so much rural land and the cities are so spread out. I would say it could be implemented on a local level, but my city implemented a single use items ban this month, and they already got so many complaints that they are now in the process of repealing it.
I remember when I was a kid "taking out the trash" meant dragging a small, lightweight can of galvanized steel to the end of the driveway once a week. That's how much trash a home with 4 to 5 people produced in the 80's. Now, we have 2 giant rolling dumpsters, one for "recycling" and one for garbage. The garage men used to pick up the cans and dump it in the truck. Now they need a hydraulic lift flip the can in the truck.
Make Garbage Great Again
We are a household of two, usually having breakfast and dinner at home. And a 17 l plastic bag usually serves for two weeks. Half of that is cat litter...
I do drag about the same volume of glass, tin cans, PET bottles to the respective recycling sites, though.
I'm not going to refute your main point, as I think we have largely become a "replace it, don't repair it" society since the 80s, but the things you use as arguments don't relate to the volume of trash.
The standardization of the size and shape of the trash cans was driven by the need to automate the system. Trash gets heavy, and people's back likely hurt after years of repetitive motion of dumping the can into a truck. Hydraulic lifts both save time and their backs, but requires standardized trash cans. That meant the cans likely grew in size to support the weight of the trash and the forces from the hydraulic.
Secondly, separating recyclables from standard trash AT THE HOME severely cuts back on the amount of contaminants in recyclables, by simply not mixing those two things at all. Contamination basically can render your recyclables as non processable.
And finally, we have learned a lot about trash and it's impact on the environment since the 80s. Of course the system would see changes in 40 years of progress.
"Garbage Day..."
I take my trash out once a week, and I switched to a 4 gallon can in the kitchen because the larger ones never got half filled before they'd get funky. Some of my neighbors produce a volume of trash that seems to exceed the volume of their living space, on a weekly basis.
I'm in India, and we've got these cool 250ml glass sodas like Pepsi, Coke, Sprite, 7UP, Fanta, Limca, Mountain Dew, Miranda, and more. Anything bigger comes in plastic, but we do have 250ml plastic ones for takeaway. You can drink and give back the glass bottle, but if you want to take it home, you gotta shell out a bit extra for the glass bottle itself.
I imagine it's better for India to have glass.
It keeps in cold for longer.
Plus, warm Coca-Cola or Pepsi is the worst taste ever.
As a kid in the 70's there were smashed bottles everywhere in campsites, pubic places and even our favourite picnic spots in the local forests. I still have the scars from the cuts on my feet from running barefoot and getting big gashes from the broken glass everywhere. So although I would like a return to glass bottles too, at least kids today don't have the same hazards from plastic and cans.
but I guess there was no deposit on those bottles back then. I think this works wonders and people don’t throw it away because they want their money back.
@@marcd6897many places in the US had deposit / return setups. But single 12 ounce bottles often came from machines. Glass beer bottles are still an environmental problem.
Now they have nanoplastics in their blood stream instead.
You must have lived in an odd place that didn't have deposit bottles. My area did, and most bottles went back to the stores and then back to the bottlers.
Almost half of the drinks price. Now that is how you motivate people to recycle.
Those savings wouldn't ever pass on to consumers. We'd just be padding corporate profit margins.
@@iainballas they don't lower prices, but they do end up raising prices slower than they otherwise would have. So you don't immediately see the savings but they do come over time. It's the same with self checkout, if they didn't have that prices today would be higher than they are now.
not the point@@iainballas
@@MegaLokopo Wait, you think corporations have a limit on how much profit they are willing to make off you? BAHAHAHA!
When they cut costs and staff they give themselves a big fat pay check, you get nothing.
@@rmac3217 so why isn't coke more expensive now?
I don't know if people outside of Germany know this, but a big thing when it comes to deposit bottles and the high return rate of these is that many people who have a low pension or live below the poverty line or are homeless like to spend a few hours on the weekend or on Spend the day collecting bottles at concerts or football games, for example, or looking for returnable bottles at train stations and on trains. There are people who carelessly leave cans and bottles behind or throw them away, but there are also people who intentionally leave returnable bottles next to trash cans. Some cities in Germany even have shelves for bottles so that people who collect these bottles don't reach into a trash can and possibly injure themselves on sharp-edged rubbish.
its the same in the US
@@ramboturkey1926not in every state but generally, many countries have adopted deposit systems (like Denmark, Sweden, Poland and the Netherlands).
In the US its obvious that the recyclers are no better than the garbage men and are only doing it for profit.
@@ramboturkey1926 Where in the US do you have a deposit system? Here in Ontario we only have it for alcohol containers.
@@KatherynneF MI its for glass bottles and and soda cans, plastic bottles,
I almost exclusively stock my pantry with things in mason jars. Looks nice and organized. I love the aesthetic. And I can see what I have and what I need or don’t need. Lots of pros all around.
Levi, this comment is not on this video specifically but Future Proof in general. You are so so so talented! I'm continually blown away with how good your videos are! You strike the perfect balance of information and entertainment. You obviously have a great research team behind you. But you are also a fantastic communicator! Along with the important content, we get the perfect amount of wit, satire, and personality! Dare I compare you to a young Rick Mercer!?!
I also watch your content with Leah - love you both❤
Gotta love that virtually all beverages today, and even water, contains hundreds of thousands of plastic particles inside.
its been 100 years since we started wrapping everything with plastic aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand, guess what, nothing happens. its safe.
@@franciscovessani6720 look at that. leading scientist of the field. Phd from the university of reddit. Hear me out but bunch of non degradable hydrocarbon polymer particles that are ever accumulating in our bodies and our bodies have no way of disposal from seems... I dunno... Unhealthy? Crazy I know.
Spreading myths is tight!
@@franciscovessani6720you have pfas inside you
@@Assywalker you consume atleast one credit card worth of plastic per month
GLASS IS BETTER.
Nice minutemen pfp
You are really great, as You are the only one in this entire world to make video on this topic in entire CZcams and caring about environments, but how to get glass bottles back and dave environment
Glass is nice but the problem is that some of it does not get recycled and ends up broken in rivers, lakes, beaches, parks and other places where people walk barefoot.
And on roadways where it causes flat tires.
In Sweden there was a standard bottle created ca. 1885 to be used by all the breweries. This type of bottle is still used to this day.. It means that different brewers can use he same type of bottles in a loop, in a pool system.
nice! while we have bottle recycling in Czechia, every manufacturer is using slightly different bottles, so not every bottle will be accepted by every shop.
If you're going to use glass, that's how to do it. Otherwise, just use aluminum with a plastic liner. It's virtually 100% recyclable and any impurities mostly burn away with very little material lost in the process.
cool. i just thought about that we also could make a recycling system for canned goods in glass 🤔
I love the iconic shape of Absolut Vodka bottles myself 😀
Same in Poland:)
Well, almost.
I would say that 90% of beers come out in standardized bottles (usually green or brown glass) and those are the one that have 'deposit value' - you pay some money exactly for the bottle itself (1zł - while usual beer price ranges from 3 to 5zł) but part of breweries also sells beers in not standardized bottles.
Im glad that mexico still keep the glass bottles
Same in Brazil
Given the option I always choose the glass one
@@herrerasauro7429I remember seeing a commercial from Brazil for coke where it was actually a bottle made out of ice so it was eco friendly.
Although idk how your tongue and lips wouldn’t stick to the ice like in A Christmas story 😂
Not only glass bottles, there are also reusable plastic Coca-Cola bottles available in Mexico in various sizes. You just take your reusable plastic bottle to your nearby store, and they sell you a filled bottle.
Same in DR 🇩🇴
@@herrerasauro7429 Plus since we have a coke factory in our city its cheaper, one 1l bottle of coke costs an average of 5R$ (1$) if you give back a glass bottle
In high school in the mid-60s I worked at a supermarket. Bottled Coke was still the thing, but it wasn't hard to see why Coke and stores were happy to see it go away. Recycling went against the retail traffic flow. Rather than have a public that paid to take things away, they were paid to bring things in. Where I worked had an entire room dedicated to those bottles and the sweet residue attracted insects. Going plastic eliminated that hassle.
In the present I'm moving the other direction, doing my best to get away from plastic for storing food and going back to glass. There are chemicals in plastic that are dubious (at best) to our health.
the return system in germany, like the one shown, is for single use containers only.
a system for multi use containers also exist, but it is taken over largely by plastic bottles, only regional and beer brands still use glass bottles.
Yup, in the 1970s I remember glass Coca-Cola bottles - straight from vending machines, grocery stores, and even served in restaurants. The sides of the glass had a frost band where all the other bottles had touched/rubbed over time during the recycle process.
Still the way in Mexico and latin America and use sugar not fructose
in the 90s i went with school to a pool with a glass bottle coca cola vending machine!
the only one i ever saw working, was neat, the bottle were clamed and one was released that you could pull it out when you paid,
but only some 15 bottles i think were available that way without refilling?
i wonder most why they died out in bars and such... some 25 years ago bars in europe would never show a plastic soda bottle.. in my yough most actually used big soda glass bottles still!
now.. not any more :( ,
i understand for household, and on the go, but bars that want to show them a bit more fancy .. i see more compentition for coca cola fancy drinks in glass bottles, but a coca cola one has becoma really rare sigth to see.. they really want to avoid to have to offer it more wildly...
while we still have a national glass bottle return system here in Belgium.. for all the beer bottles and such, that coca cola can just easely use too...
@@Ant-ym3mwwe get them in the US in the Midwest. I buy them at my local Dillons.
In Sweden until like 2004 we had plastic bottles that were returned and reused, not recycled, just like glass bottles. These were taken out of use because people kept returning them after having used them to store motor oil and stuff like that.
We still have reuseable plastic bottles in standard circulation in Germany. In fact we have both reuseable plastic and glass bottles for most types of alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages, as well as one-time use containers from plastic or aluminium, which also have a deposit fee on them. In the latter case it is 25 cents, which is quite substantial, and makes most people return their one time use containers.
@@Schnittertm1 Sweden still has reusable glass bottles, although they have gotten less and less common over time. Soda in glass bottles are since a few years back only distributed to restaurants and cafes. But anyway, I think reusable plastic bottles sound really unhygienic and it's insane how such a system apparently still exists. Plastic has a sorta porous surface and can't be properly cleaned unlike glass.
By the way, aluminium cans and smaller plastic bottles only have a deposit fee of 1 SEK in Sweden, about 10 Eurocent. Larger plastic bottles are 2 SEK. The former were only 0.50 SEK until 2009, it was largely changed because the last decimal coin was taken out of circulation then.
@@Eddies_Bra-att-ha-grejer
speaking of glassbottles in sweden, i read that systembolaget (the swedish monopol company of alcohol sales) was going to stop (or lessen atleast) the sales of alcohol in glass bottles. their site compares the manufacturing of diffrent glass bottles vs paper and plastic. (1/3 less with paper/pet/can)
they also proudly proclaims that "wine in paper, pet or can taste the same as wine in a glass bottle"
how much truth there is in that i cannot say
I remember getting a really scratched up Pepsi bottle when I was a kid. The paint felt neat on them too.
That was the story we got with the Gallon plastic milk jugs as well when I was a kid. Probably wasn't actually true, and more likely that the industry found that a BS story or two in the news saved them a lot of money not having to pay for recycling.
it's a shame, everything tastes better out of glass, that's a fact, the hierarchy is first, glass, aluminum can/reusable metal bottle, carton, and finally plastic.
Aluminum Coke cans are lined in plastic. There is a video on here somewhere showing a Coke can set in an acid that eats away the entire can. leaving a transparent plastic bag.
@@bite-sizedshorts9635 mk well liquid death cans aren't lined in plastic, so therefore you're wrong
Here in Australia about 15 years ago I remember there always being two coke bottle options in the shops, one was in plastic and the other was called "coke classic" and was in a glass bottle.
The glass bottle one always tasted way crisper and also had screw on tin lids unlike the old ones.
in Bulgaria (and maybe other places), when you buy beer in glass bottles, the clerk will ask you if you bring empty ones, cuz, if you do, you will get reduced bill to pay deducing each bottle's established worth. Pretty handy, I must say.
Yes same in Poland.
Not limited to beer, but family stores in the Philippines has that same system. You either pay additional money for deposit, or bring a similar bottle to the beverage you're buying in exchange for a new one. These are also done in soft drinks.
Same here in Czechia, stores are legally mandated to accept them and those bottles are quite durable, breaking them is quite rare. You can even get durable carrying case for deposit (it's plastic but it gets reused many times, it's the same thing stores get the beer so it's much more eco friendly than cardboard) and we get trough a lot of beer
Nice
Same in Rwanda
In the Philippines, we still have bottled softdrinks that can be bought from small stores, you can return the bottle as a deposit and its surprisingly cheaper.
I think another factor why plastic won over glass too quickly is USA's car centrism and suburbanism. In the Philippines, urban planning sucks BUT every neighborhood has a sari-sari store in walking distance where you can buy and return your glass bottle. In developed countries, they instead have convenience stores and local groceries. In most of the USA, you either need a trip to a large supermarket from far away or have it delivered to you. Both favor plastic bottles because customers wouldn't like to return bottles themselves and retailers wouldn't like to take them either (without intervention).
@@mk_rexx Another reason Philippines still does bottle deposits is because they're socio-economically on par with the United States circa 1922. That's not a diss; I'm simply saying they're a century behind America in terms of economic policy, so the things that made sense in the US 102 years ago still make sense for developing countries like the Philippines, Mexico and the Dominican Republic.
I watch a guy here on you tube, Rocks Cousteau, who lives close to the Ohio River and collects arrowheads (of which he has thousands and has donated many of them). He also delights in hitting the dumps in the hills of West Virginia almost daily to collect old glass bottles and other containers, marbles, pottery, toys, what have you. He has traded, sold and given away many of his finds over the years. I had no idea such dumps existed. I enjoy what watching what he comes up with and find him interesting. He's very knowledgeable about the history of his own locale and could teach classes.
Excellent research and presentation.
I remember when I was a kid there was a store you could go to and refill your own containers with various flavors of soda. You'd pay by the volume of the container, if I remember correctly. Today, I've seen a store that lets you do that with various cleaning products, hand soaps, dish soap, detergent, etc. I have no idea of the scalability of such a model but I'd loved to see that sort of things more often.
I also have seen this and supermarkets where you can bring your own containers for buying fruits, veggies, nuts, flour and so on. I think that is such a good idea i absolutely love it. I think this should be something that should be done at every supermarket to help with that plastic problem
Funny enough, I think McDonald and others solved that issue accidentally.
Should have kept that. Better for the environment.
I think of going to a store to get my shampoo bottle filled up every other shower or so, and then daydream a little bit about what it would be like. Sadly, I have never seen one myself, but I don't get around much, so there's that.
And at petrol stations you could have an option to choose petrol from diffrent companies
Cleaning out my grandmothers garage we found her stash of mayonnaise jars. Because they use to jar mayo in a jar with the standard mason jar threads. So my thrifty grandma would save and wash the jars and reuse them when canning. I think because of my grandma I've always saved and washed jars as the glassware in my house. If you came over today and wanted a glass of water you'd get it in an old jar.
Same!
I have a stash of Classico spaghetti sauce jars because they are a 1-1/2 pint mason jar. I use them for canning every year. I also use them to store bulk spices and other dry goods. If I have to buy something from the store that comes in a jar, I always look for products that use the standard size mason jar lid threads.
Those jars are thinner and may break in a canner or pressure canner. My mother never used those jars for things that had to go in the canner. She would use them for tomatoes, pickles, relishes, and preserves. Those could be just filled and closed up to seal.
The glass bottle return system gives me some cool ideas for D&D. What if a lot of the price of healing potions isn't the potion itself, but the sturdy glass bottles? Some places could give a hefty discount on potions if you bring your own bottles, or have a system where you get back a bit of the price of the potion if you return the bottles undamaged. It would also help encourage players to keep track of their potion bottles more carefully. Perhaps one store makes their bottles out if intentionally thin glass, making it more likely to break, while another raises the price by enchanting their glass to be as tough as steel. You could even have a system where one very high end shop enchants their bottles to return to their store when its contents are emptied.
I love the idea of some vendors being shady with dodgy work.
One way it could be done is by the bottle being made of glass fragments held together with a weak sticking charm then covered with a glamour to hide their deceit.
This way they don't have to pay for the price of a bottle to be made, instead just using shards picked up from bins or the scrap. Maybe an abused/enslaved servant's job?
@@jestermon101 "There's the guy! He cut my drink!" / "You mean, with water or something?" / "No, the drink had li'l bits of broken glass that cut my throat when I tried to drink it!"
@@SilveniumTheDrifter XD
Nicely detailed video! Thanks
Glass Bottle Coca Cola is still popular in Hong Kong. Many older restaurants still carried them and they charged a premium for that. It was a special treat to get one once in a while but they are usually at least double or even triple the price of a regular bottle of coke. Recently, even convenient stores carry them as well.
Same in the Philippines (and I assume most of SEA as well). Most small shops here will serve soft drinks in glass bottles. You can request the drink to be put in a plastic container if you wantt to bring your drink with you.
in Belgium they are only used in bars and restaurants now for some reason but they are not in shops .
@@sen5466Yup! Always bought Coke at the supermarket. When I realized the sari-sari stores nearby still carried the glass bottles, I always buy the glass ones ever since, only buying the plastic/ can ones when I had to (going for staycations and the glass bottles can't fit into the tiny hotel fridges, etc).
The glass bottle Cokes really taste a whole lot better and even keep fresh & carbonated for longer.
They are also cheaper, P30.00 for a 750ml glass bottle of Coke. Just keep exchanging the used up bottles for the new ones so we don't have to pay a deposit anymore.
@@BeautifulGrass I am so jealous. A can of coke is just 5 dollar here but a smaller glass bottle of coke usually ask for 12 to 15 dollar. The larger one cost 27 dollar for me once . It is more expensive than that bowl of noodles I was eating.
in the us its pretty standard to have mexican coke and sometimes other coke products like sprite in stores next to the single use drinks. usually its less for the same price.
theres little 4 packs too, but their never sold in larger capacities
and bougie restaurants
German here. we have the Pfand system, where almost all beverage containers have a deposit on them. single use plastic bottles 25 cents, multi use plastic bottles 15 cents, glass containers (from soft drinks, Milk, some yoghurt glasses, ...) 8 cents. and if you buy a crate of bottles (for example 24 Coca Cola Bottles), it´s 3,10€ in total (1,50€ for the crate and 1,60€ (24x0,08€) for the bottles).
so if you bring a big bag of empty single use plastic bottles, you can easily get 30 to 40 bucks, for example if your family collects them and you bring them to the supermarket once a month.
I have a collection of vintage glass pop bottles. It wasn't intentional: I was working for a construction company that was replacing the sewers in Tampa. As the old pipes were dug out, the pop bottles were brought up. The workers in the 1940's and '50's just threw them in the hole.
There's about 20, many from sodas that no longer exist.:)
In Argentina we have reusable plastic bottles, they are thicker and once they are empty you bring them to a superparket to then be washed and sanitized for companies to reuse said bottles.
Igualmente la Coca de vidrio es la Coca de vidrio
We used to have that in Norway. But the supermarket would just send them to the bottling plants for washing. The bottles felt much sturdier and better though.
And glass coke is still served in bars and restaurants :)
@@julianafernandezcasas9364 che loko, hablemos español
latin america*** coca cola's operations in argentina are equally the same throught the entire continent, as they're operated by FEMSA
In South Africa you can choose between plastic, glass, or aluminum coke bottles. Glass bottles are mostly relegated to 300ml but you can get them at almost any restaurant throughout the country. There are also specialist stores like the sweet zone that sell 1.25L glass coke bottles, or takealot where you can buy 24 300ml bottles for $16.30.
You can in the US, but they're mostly plastic bottles and aluminum cans. We still have aluminum and glass bottles though. Just rare and expensive. Where I live, most glass cola is Mexican.
I'd say it's a lot more likely that cola companies would wholesale switch to aluminum, rather than revert back to glass.
@@0o0ification Aluminium also has it's issues
@@TheSliderWLike what?
@@desertstar223 It can be hard to recycle if it has paint or has an inner plastic coating. Depending on the contents Al can leach into food causing poisoning. It's also a rare metal and sourcing/melting it can also cause pollution, etc ...
Here in Brazil we still have the glass bottles, small and big, and they're everyone's undisputed favourite. The big 1L ones you must have your own bottle in order to exchange for a full one at the closest mini market.
In Brazil too it's pretty common to see reusable bottles, sometimes they are made of glass and sometimes they're made of a stiffer and tougher plastic.
The first time you're buying it you need to pay for the bottle too, and then the next ones you just have to take the bottle with you and then hands it to the cashier and you get a discount and pay only for the drink itself while the market is gonna take care of all the logistics and what not.
I was in northern Mexico in 1987 and they still used glass coke bottles. You could buy the coke with the bottle for 16 pesos or just the coke for 8 pesos. In order to buy just the coke you either had to bring an empty bottle to trade in or drink the coke in the store and turn in the empty bottle.
Mexican coke sold in us is only in glass
We use glass bottles in India too
We still have glass bottles cokes, and a few years ago Pepsi also introduced a glass bottle Pepsi and I think also 7up
We have a local producer in my part of Canada that uses glass bottles and cane sugar. I only drink pop (soda) occasionally, but I would rather spend a bit more cash and have the good stuff!
When I was a kid in the early 80s I visited relatives in northern Minnesota and they had soda from a store called the Pop Shop. It was in glass bottles which were only branded as ”Pop Shop” with only the caps telling what flavor they were. They would save the bottles to return to the store. I remember one of the flavors being strawberry.
Each Coke bottling facility had its own glass bottles with their city stamped on the bottom. When I was a kid in the 1960s, I loved checking the city on the bottle. Back in the 1990s, in my hometown of Annapolis, the city had to dig up some utility lines where the city dump used to be. They came across a treasure trove of Annapolis stamped Coke bottles. I took several home…which my wife (now ex) threw out.
I see why she became an ex😂
@@oxjpmg5554 Her theory was to throw away anything not used in the last six months…so she threw me away.
@@Nicksonian ouch 🤕. Sorry to hear that
Boy...that escalated quickly. I mean that really got out of hand fast!
Here in Newfoundland, we pay 8 cents on each beverage bottle, plastic and glass and tetra pack, and get 5 cents back at the recycling depot. For alcohol bottles we pay a little more and get a slightly higher rate back.
I typically give them to a family member who recycles to get money, or put them in my blue bag with my town garbage box for recycling.
I remember watching a video (on CZcams) where broken glass was put into some sort of smelter, and it turned all these broken glass pieces into marbles
In mexico we still have glass bottles and we also have "returnable" plastic bottles that are thicker plastic so it can be cleaned and refilled. Only instead of being paid back for returning them we have to pay a deposit the first time and when we return the bottle we can either get the deposit back (only if it is the same store we bought from first and the cashier agrees to), or buy another bottle at a cheaper price. We also have several local brands that still sell soft drinks in glass bottles for seemingly no reason (though that's unfortunately changing lately).
You guys use real sugar too. When I lived closer to the border I loved going to Mexico for the BEST cola from smaller glass bottles.
Nowadays, brands (here in Germany) like to use glass bottle to feel "premium" and mark up the price even more. Even Coca-cola does this. Here, they released a reusable 1L glass bottle that costs about 1.5-2x as much as the reusable 1L plastic ones (not counting the deposit) while weirdly enough, some local brands of soft drinks charge about the same amount whether you pick the glass or thick plastic bottles they offer.
Finland has bottle machines at super markets. I can get 20 cent for small plastic, and 40 cents for large
They have them all over the USA also... Whole rooms of them in all the big grocery stores. You get your receipt from the machine when you are done and can take it to the front register to get cash or credit. One thing I don't like about the machines is that if they don't recognize the barcode (such as if it is damaged or if you got a bottle from Canada), it just gives it back to you. I wish they had a button for "take it and recycle it anyway", but they don't. Same problem if the can was accidentally crushed.
@@SimonASNGsome machines here still take them. Same situation in Finland with swedish cans and bottles. Doesnt give you money but at least takes it
@@SimonASNG i really like it when these machines refuse to take a bottle because it is slightly crushed when at the end the machine is crushing the bottle...
In Brazil we still use glass bottles for soda - even Coca-Cola. They are mostly used for 300ml ( ... let me get my HP ... 0.0793gl). One of the reasons, I think, is it's much nicer to drink from glass and glass keeps the beverage chill for a longer time.
BTW, the deposit idea is really really good!
oh ... I remember buying cooking oil from a barrel with a pump that we filled the glass bottle we brought from home. I even saw tahine selling machines that worked like that - you put your pot beneath, pressed a button and the tahine would fill the pot until the desired weight was reached. (as I said, I'm from Brazil and I saw that in São Paulo downtown)
I love how you mentioned that restaurants still use glass bottle's .
Also do notice that beer is normally sold in either cans or glass bottle's. consumer's won't accept beer that is sold in plastic
I remember being a kid in the late 80s, the gas stations in Michigan would keep their cases of Coca-Cola outside.
During the winter, extreme cold would sometimes burst the tops of the glass open. On one of these occasions, I licked the top of one of these freeze-burst bottles, eating the frozen overflow of soda that looked like an icee/slurpee.
My mom yelled at me telling me how dangerous that was, because there could have been slivers of glass mixed in with the ice/frozen soda pop.
I remember being terrified all night about possible glass that was making its way through my body, waiting to die any moment.
Ahh, what a lovely childhood memory. Stupid thing to do, but a funny story to tell now that its over.
The silly things we’d get scared of as kids
The glass is still inside you waiting for a good moment to attack! 😂
@@Fremek nah! I figure its gone the way of many a wooden splinter stuck in my finger through the years: its probably enveloped in micrometers of scar tissue. Trapped with nowhere to go. Then again, if you don't hear from me again, you know what happened....💀czcams.com/users/sgaming/emoji/7ff574f2/emoji_u1f480.png
Like dropping pull tabs on pop cans into the can before drinking.😮
lol tiny grains of glass will pass harmlessly through your system.
Source: Ingested glass by mistake, nothing bad happened.
bottle return machines are extremely commonplace in michigan, and returning them gives 10c. I live in michigan, and rarely travel to other states for long periods, so when i went to stay with my boyfriend in south carolina for a 2 weeks, when i asked his family what they do with returnables, they looked at me like i just asked them a question in french. i was extremely confused until i learned that most states don't return bottles/cans
to this day my 65 year old mom pulls over when she sees bottles tossed on the side of the road. when the trunk is full, she cashes them in for gas money. it embarassed me as a kid, but now that I'm a tax paying, mortgage owning, bill toting adult I, I understand.
@@taskmasterbrainmasterWhen I was a kid in the 80's my school bus driver would do that. At the end of the school year she took us kids to a local party store and bought everyone treats with that money.
It doesn’t GIVE you 10 cent. It gives you 10 cent BACK!
it’s a prepaid tax that you get back when you give your plastic bottle back.
Ah yes, our lovely banks of return machines where half the recyclables are sitting on top of the machine because either the store doesn't sell the brand or the machine's scanner is defective and doesn't read the barcode.
I love glass bottles and get them whenever it’s available. Topo Chip is a good example of this. It just tastes better from a glass than the plastic bottle.
When visiting Toppers Rhum on Sint Maarten In 2019 they had this system: we sell you a rhum with a quality bottle & when Its empty you can come & refill It.
The old glass patent bottle still stands In my bar locker in my own kitchen hehe.
While on Rarotonga In 2022 the local brewery had this idea: we sell you a pitcher/container & you can buy the beer you want.
Due to the boat & locals not really wanting that many glass bottles & the landfills being very few then encouraging people to buy the beer & fill it up from a big tank was a great idea.
Here in Venezuela, glass bottles had a come back since a few years ago due to the hyperinflation, theyŕe actually cheaper than plastic bottles and are retunable
Hey I'm from Venezuela and I remember the glass beer bottle economy we had back then before the crisis.
As a boy scout in New Zealand in the 1970's, we used to have annual "bottle drives" as a fund-raiser. We would go from door to door asking for people's empty bottles to return for a refund. I can remember hauling many, many wooden crates of a dozen beer bottles out of some houses...2 cents for a beer bottle and 5 cents for a large coke bottle.
Why didn't you go out and pick up bottles of the street like we did?
in Algeria too we use cane sugar instead of syrup
glass bottles also still exist in 33cl and 1L format
Hi. Thank you for the awesome video. I'm a big fan of glass for the same reasons as you point out. I think the bottlers need to adopt a standard bottle or a few standard bottles for their beverages. The same can be said for cosmetics. This will lead to better abilities to reuse the bottles as they come back to the bottler. Less energy is wasted in recreating a bottle from either new material or recycled material. I don't know if there's a good solution about the increased weight of glass leading to increase emissions in its transportation. Someone needs to do a life cycle cost analysis
Michigan has a deposit system with bottle return machines at every store as well. As a result, it has by far the highest return rate of any state in the United States.
Assuming that the supermarkets can maintain their stink and recycling machines. In my town there are only two return facilities, so there's lines always backed up out the door. At that rate people just opt to throw their containers out.
Is it returning if it is crushing? y store crushes the bottles. Plastic can last for thousands of years. I cannot possibly understand why plastics are destroyed if they are robust enough to hold pounds of pressure _in excess_ of their design.
as a michigander i can confirm, my mom made bottle deposits every-time we went grocery shopping; just saved them all in bags until we had time to go, sometimes a month-or-twos worth, and that extra $7-$10 went to me as allowance 😌😂
I always just thought that the bottle returns were standard everywhere in the country
What is need is to expand the bottle return to include sports drinks, juice and other beverages like that. Between that and regular recycling means there would be hardly any garbage, at least in my house. Those types of drinks do go in recycling bin but I think the bottle return type recycling is more efficient when it comes to especially plastics.
Here in Germany we have plastic bottles who are designed to be reusable. And even if someone throws such a bottle away, you can be sure, that somebody will pick It up and bring it back to get the money. But we have also designated containers for single use Glass containers to be remelted and reused in another form.
Unfortunately it's all the super thin "Einweg" plastic bottles that need to be shredded and melted down, while the thick and sturdy "Mehrweg" ones that are just cleaned out and much better for the environment are more rare and almost never get a discount below the "Einweg" ones. So the industry is actively pushing the people away from glass and Mehrweg plastic. Despite, I should have to say, the taste of the Mehrweg ones also being genuinely better because the carbonation doesn't disappear so quickly for some reason.
@dschehutinefer5627 Those extra emissions from shredding melting and shooting the new bottles are mostly if not totally offset by the reduction in transport emissions due to the lighter weight of the bottles and their reduced volume in the shredded state.
In Munich there is the 'Pfand' (sp?) the deposit on plastic bottles that can be reclaimed at a reverse vending machine. During Oktoberfest some people roam the U-Bahn collecting huge numbers of bottles to claim back the Pfand.
@@EdMcF1 Pfand is a Germany wide system, allowing you to return your bottles in any supermarket that sells the brand you want to return.
If you take a random bottle to a random supermarket the chance like 95% they will take it.
@@antonf.9278 Thats not 100% true, a supermarket in Germany only has to take the same kind of bottles they are selling. that means if one supermarket only sells one way plastic bottles they also only have to take back those. but with one way plastic bottles your 95% might be true.
In Australia, Paper, Plastic and Glass bottles give you 10c if you return them, some come with 20c and some of the 10c is changing to 20c.
FWIW, I've noticed my cafeteria at work has replaced Coke 1L (16oz) plastic bottles with 1L aluminum cans. At least it's a step in the right direction.
Many years ago I worked in the recycling center of Hy-Vee grocery stores. That was a truly nasty job. Dregs of beer, wine, soda, etc all mixing together made the back sorting area a... unique... smelling one; and perpetually sticky. Stacking all of those glass bottles would occasionally end in tears for those who lacked common sense. But you could tell some bottles were absolutely being heavily reused due to the external wear; and that was a good thing.
Subbed for clear narration, great presentation, humor and the Clue reference. 😀
„People love mexican coke“. „I tried some coke and it was great!“ lmao😂
Made with filtered and processed waste water like the kind your poo and pee end up in. I'm not even kidding.
@@stvlu733 the whole world works like this, or do you think we just launch sewer water into the space?
i was gonna mention that🤣
@RafaelMunizYT Other places in the world have fresh resources. Mexico does not. Maybe that's why is so cheap to produce there. Have a few Nabisco crap cookies while drinking that swill. Send it out into space 😂. Do you have any idea on how nature works?
@@stvlu733 thats fucking stupid where did you hear that, yahoo news?
In Canada we’ve always had a liquor bottle return at government owned beer stores 10 cents per bottle and 15 cent wine bottles. Huge success
The bottle programme is subsidized by your tax dollars in order to break even and remain operational. That's pretty much the opposite of "huge success."
I don’t know where in Canada you are but liquor and wine bottle depots are a fairly new thin here in Ontario. Beer bottles on the other hand have had deposits on them for as long as I can remember and I’m 54.
Re-usable sturdy plastic bottles are WAY more energy efficient and practical than glas bottles ever were.
I have no idea how that fact just didn't come up in your research...
Or the fact that the explosion in disposed of plastic bottles is largely from the rise of bottled water, not Coke.
Here in the Philippines, glass bottles exist in equilibrium with plastic bottles for soft drinks, glass bottle drinks sold in local stores are cheaper than plastic
Here in Germany glass still is king for anything with alcohol, but no idea if they are actually reused or just melted down
Anything that has ‘Pfand’ (deposit) on it, is being cleaned and re-used. Mostly beer/beverages and joghurts/milk containers
In America most beer is either in cans or glass.
hey mexican guy here, the tittle of the video called my attention because yes, here every convenience store sells soft drinks in glass bottles still as mentioned in the video
for a good while my mom would ask me almost daily to go to the store and bring her a glass of coke light ever since i was like 13 years old (the nearest convenience store is 2 houses away from my house) and you just have to give the glass bottle back and got like, 4 or 6 mexican pesos off than regular price, can't really recal how much cheaper from regular price that was, maybe like 20% cheaper
now i'm almost 21 years old and my mom has now switched to telling me to buy her a 1.5 liter plastic bottle instead of the usual 500ml bottles because in the past couple of years the prices for, well, price inflation happens and now glass bottles coke are relatively more expensive to buy than bigger plastic bottles even after you return the glass bottles
i really wish they made glass bottles a way more viable option, they still sell a lot here and sometimes i buy them myself but it's getting harder on the consumer to justify buying them over plastic
i also have a funny story related to glass bottles: one time when i was like 16 my mom left her glass coke on the freezer, i open the freezer to see it's frozen and reach for it to take it out, right as i'm taking it out the freezer it EXPLODES on my hand due to the expansion of the coke when it freezes, and somehow i was unharmed, terrified, but unharmed
In Saint Vincent we have a soft drink company that still uses bottles and is hugely successful… from my own experience i think its the fact that the cases the drinks come in are extremely durable because their made of plastic instead of the bottles, most people just keep one of these cases in or around they’re homes an take it back to a wholesaler when its full of empties and because the company makes it clear that the drinks are cheaper because bottles are returned people do
There are still few places where you can find shattered glass milk bottles now and after 10 000 years. They are so cool.
To me, as a European, it’s crazy how someone from such a developed country as Canada can speak of returning your bottles as something exotic.
I'm Canadian, and we've been returning bottles since I was a teen in the 70s. That is my city, Halifax, but if you live in the western parts, they don't recycle as much. IDK why? We always looked to Germany, and I recall the rivers being cleaned up, both in Europe and England. Since the pandemic, people don't seem to care as much? Masks littering everywhere, coffee cups, etc. It's sad and I don't understand either. :(
@@jennifermarlow. Its just horrible, littering has got out of hand
Canadian here too - in Ontario. We have an amazing beer bottle/liquor bottle recycle program. We pay 10 cents per container and get it back when we return it. This doesn’t exist outside the booze business though.
I'll go a step further and wonder how we ended up with such a big soft drink consumption in the first place
I'm a Canadian and it's crazy how this person is describing them as if they're something exotic. Ontario literally has one of the best bottle/can deposit schemes around in terms of waste diverted.
We still have a bottle return system in Michigan. Everything carbonated is sold in return-deposit bottles by law. Beer is still sold primarily in glass bottles. Plastic bottles exist for beer, but they're very very rare.
Aluminum cans are also a good substitute! I think soda taste much better out of a can rather than a plastic bottle. It is also pretty easy to recycle.
Although not as common as it used to be, soft drinks (and even more beer and seltzer) are fairly commonly sold in re-usable glass (or sometimes thick plastic) containers here in Argentina.
But it's not so high tech as in Europe; seltzer (just called "soda" here) is usually delivered to your home (just like milk used to be) and the "sodero" takes the empty containers with them and gives you the new ones.
In the case of Beer and soft drink containers usually you pay for the bottle in advance and you can keep it (you have just payed for it) untill the next time you go to your local supermarket or small store (often if the owner knows you they trust you would return them) when you just drop the empty bottle in a box near the entry and say to the cashier or owner "hey I just leave a beer/coca bottle" and that's it, no more money is changing hands between you and the store for the bottle. And that's not all, you can go to the store with an empty Stella Artois bottle (which is green) and take with you a filled Warsteiner (which is brown and manufactured by other company) and it's all ok; by sheer volume this end up working for the seller and distribution company. With soft drinks (mainly Pepsi and Coca-Cola do it here) it's not so interchangeable but usually it's not a big deal if you leave a Sprite bottle and take with you a Fanta one.
In bigger supermarkets usually you have machines like in europe or some person will take the bottles and give you a ticket.
I wish this sistem would be used for more products and in many other parts.
It's so interesting watching this, as someone living in a country where basically all soft-drink bottles are recycled. Both glass and plastic bottles have a deposit on them, varying by the size and type of bottle, and you return them to whichever supermarket you feel like. They all have the little machines like you showed from the Netherlands, and it doesn't really matter which brand or shape they have, as long as they have the standardized mark on them, saying which value they have.
Granted, sometimes the machine is broken and it sucks that you brought a huge bag with the bottles from a whole month with you in vain, but it mostly works just perfectly! I would feel SO wrong not saving the bottles in that bag and bringing them in once in a while.
I've never been to Mexico but my buddy told me when he went surfing in Baja for a summer, he could buy a case of Pacifico beer and then literally bring the bottles back and have them refilled for free because the beer was cheaper than the glass bottles.
4:32 Grocery stores in Upstate New York have had machines where you can return plastic and glass bottles as well as cans for as long as I can remember.
Depends which countries you go to, I live in malawi and we get glass bottles on the regular. Though the caveat is you have to return them
I'm living in the Philippines and soda companies still uses glass bottles from 32oz to a liter bottles. It is already part of the culture to give a certain amount of change to reassure the seller that you'll return the bottle. Otherwise, you won't get you money back.
Not only that they clean and reuse glass bottles. The bottles have what I thought was a nice patina from their reuse.
Or if you have spare bottles at home you take those bottles to exchange them for filled ones. That's what we do for 1 litre drinks.
Germany still loves its glass. Pro at recycling them. They also have super thick plastic bottles that are hard to compress
Soda here in Germany is mostly in plastic bottles...sometimes overpriced cans or glass. The Coke glass bottles are just a nostalgia rip-off.
At least many types of mineral water are still available in glass.
In my country, around the early 2000s was when plastic bottles became the norm here. It started with the 1.5L bottles, then the smaller sizes followed suit.
Glass bottles are an objectively better drinking experience
I remember weekend trips to Mexico in college, and the beer bottlers there would pay about 50% the cost of the beer to get the bottle back. Pay $5 for a six pack, get $3 back when you return the empties.
And those bottles very clearly had been through the bottling mechanism countless times, wear rings that had worn all the way through the printed labeling.
5:05 Palatka Florida turned the old bottling company into a microbrewery that still uses glass bottles.
I used to live 20 minutes away from Palatka, they've done a lot to restore historic downtown.
In my opinion, the returnable glass bottle method was the most sustainable when supply was closer to demand: I'm sure that cost of shipping lighter plastic bottled product from a regional bottling plant is more than offset by savings of not needing to operating multiple local bottling facilities (less lights to turn on, less property taxes, less people to pay).
Has there been a study of the impact (oil/energy usage) of manufacturing and transporting products in plastic versus impact of transporting in reusable glass containers the same distance?
I worked the front gate at a brewery in the early 1990s... Every day, we had 53' long trailers full of returnable bottles coming into the facility with those same trucks taking out a same size load of full bottles. The bottle washing line that cleaned, washed off the old labels, and sanitized the bottles just minutes before they got refilled... it was a system that worked great. From what I understand, more often than not, the trucks arriving at the facility arrive empty and leave with "disposable" glass bottles. Oh, and those non-returnable bottles go through the same washing and sanitizing steps before being filled...
In my country every soda/drinks company was forced to use the same bottles so you could return them to the store and a few cents and then the bottles were cleaned and sent/bought back by the drink companies
The final mile freight is the killer.
One thing missed by the how plastics are failing is the contaminants and lack of reliable feedstocks from the recyclers.
It's crazy to me that with all the meal-kit services, all the shopping and delivery services, bottle pickup isn't a thing.
Meal kit services use disposable packaging, they don't have to have trucks and workers collecting empties.
Check out Pieter Pot if you're living in the Netherlands. They sell all kinds of food in glass pots and bottles that they take back after use (milk, chips, cookies, etc).
They went bancrupt a few months ago but are now trying a restart.
Glass shatters and plastic doesn't, which is a big reason why I think plastic is the better material. Metal works too, you can drop a metal can and it'll probably be fine. But if you drop a glass bottle, it will break and possibly leave shards of glass on the ground.
No they are still available in Bangladesh.
The best thing is, in fridge glass bottles get amazingly chilled that blends with the generic taste of beverage itself.
Yeah, but Bangladesh is a third world country unfortunately.
@KeyserSoze23 so this only applies to first world countries then?
They're in romania too
I also didn't watch the video just wanted to leave this comment