[Closed] Which is better for the environment?

I'm guessing as they almost wholesale shifted from bottles to cans at some point in the 70s/80s despite bottles being much nicer to drink from, Cans are cheaper to use (production, transportation and shrinkage costs).

Bother are infinitely recyclable.

Apparently depends on recycling. If not recycled, glass is better.

https://www.opb.org/news/blog/ecotrope/the-greener-beer-bottles-v-cans/

Reusable bottles, filled and distributed from as close as possible, recycled when they smash.

If you want to support the industry that is best at inspiring material recovery and can almost always be locally recycled, choose the can. And finally, a full life-cycle assessment of typical glass, aluminum, and plastic drink containers in the US found that glass containers have the smallest carbon footprint, making glass the best choice.

from https://livegreen.recyclebank.com/because-you-asked-should-i-choose-plastic-aluminum-or-glass-bottles

I'm probably sat in the place to get those very answers....

(Waves in case anyone else is bored at the Dusseldorf Messe this afternoon!)

But we know STW hates evidence based reasoning so whichever looks nicer!!

The transport impact will be a major factor, I'm also aware of a large soft drinks company moving everything over from steel to alu as the price and weight saving adds up in the end.

The melting point of Aluminium is 660'C and glass is 1,400'C so I would assume that aluminium would be "better" after recycling a few times.

No idea about mineral extraction though!

IIRC from uni: The energy savings of recycling are greatest with glass by an order of magnitude (i.e. the cost of making new glass is significantly higher than recycling it) compared to metals where the cost of recycling isn't that much different to processing raw materials. Not sure how it breaks down at an individual container level though.

One interesting point I do remember though is that the energy saved recycling glass (i.e. the most of any recyclable material) was less than you would use transporting the empties to the supermarket by car. So you should just bin your empties on new years day or save them rather than making a special trip to the closed supermarket!

So the most environmentally friendly beer is the one you walk to the pub and drink from draught (or walk to the supermarket at least).

barrels surely, so as to minimise packaging per unit of beverage

The melting point of Aluminium is 660’C and glass is 1,400’C so I would assume that aluminium would be “better” after recycling a few times.

But of course you can (in principle) re-use glass.

One interesting point I do remember though is that the energy saved recycling glass (i.e. the most of any recyclable material) was less than you would use transporting the empties to the supermarket by car. So you should just bin your empties on new years day or save them rather than making a special trip to the closed supermarket!

But you're going to the supermarket anyway, usually, to get food.

... are there any brands that reuse beer bottles anymore. It was a fairly common thing back in the 80s?

In terms of glass v aluminium. Al requires more energy to produce than glass from raw materials. But Al much less energy to recycle. Al waste is much more likely to be directly recycled back into effect cans.

Al also less weight for a given volume of liquid so less energy to transport.

So it depends but probably Al

… are there any brands that reuse beer bottles anymore. It was a fairly common thing back in the 80s?

Microbreweries will often refill bottles/growlers but not on a large scale. It worked in previous decades when beer was more local so Newcastle Brown bottles could be collected from all over the NE and returned to the brewery, Boddingtons in Manchester etc.

There's also issues around cleanliness, beer goes mouldy if the dregs are left in the bottle, so you need to clean it out, which means clear bottles, which isn't then good for the shelf life of the beer inside.

It's a shame really, but for it to be workable these days you would need a standard bottle and a very efficient way of collecting them (as pointed out, they're not worth returning yourself). And modern bottles are much much thinner as they don't need to be reused so production costs are probably offset by transport savings too.

I don't know if it has changed but a few years ago no one was bottling with green glass in the UK so all green glass sent for "recycling" either went abroad or was ground up to be used as "sand"  so the colour of the glass counts as well

There are no glass recycling places close enough to us, so all the glass 'recycling' is ground down and used as sand.

Bother are infinitely recyclable.

but bottles are much more reusable.

Its a shame we've lost the infrastructure to reuse bottles well. I like a well-worn bottle. Alpine bottles used to have a decent patina on them. When I was in Tunisia we'd get coke bottles that were pretty much opaque with wear and tear from re-use.

Given the dominant role a small number of retailers now have it wouldn't be difficult for them to insist that all wine, or beer, or soft drink bottles are the same shape. Why are wine bottles different shapes? They all hold the same stuff in the same volume. The proliferation of craft beers mean a lot of their bottles (from different brewers) are the same but theres not really a way those bottles can get reused either.

I try and buy bigger bottles so as to use less glass. In practice I probably just drink more.

Remember that bottles generally don't come with those turtle-strangling plastic rings around the top like wot cans do either, so if 'environment' is wider than recycling that's another vote for bottles.

Bottles make sense when you have a reuse system in place like a deposit scheme, after that the colour of the glass plays a big factor. Clear or blue glass requires purer materials so you're more likely to find that is made from virgin materials. Brown glass is made from any old colour ground down so can be easily produced from recycled glass.

You need to grind glass back down to sand to reform it into recycled glass and the amount of energy required is pretty much the same as a new glass bottle so that best thing to do is reuse the glass to prevent having to do that.

Aluminum has a big energy requirement to refine and produce it in the first place, but then recycling it can occur almost as many times as you want with a much lower amount of energy

It's a little bit six and 2/3rd's but the best option of all is not use it in the first place, but then how do you get you handcrafted triple IPA's?

Remember that bottles generally don’t come with those turtle-strangling plastic rings around the top like wot cans do either,

Most have binned them have they not? A lot went to plastic reusable caps and brewdog and others going with a cardboard box now

Worst job I ever had (lasted all of one day) at some bottling factory, removing the non returnable bottles from an incoming conveyor before the washing process.

Purely on the basis that you can collect cans & weigh them in for cash, ie used aluminium cans have some value, I'd go for cans unless bottles can be reused rather than recycled.

When I was studying in the US in the early 90s alu cans had an actual value for the recycler. we used to get tramps coming round and asking for 78c (the price of a bottle of T-bird) but after a couple of times we just used to hand over a carrier bag filled with cans so that they had to work for their refreshing fruit beverage.

I'd have thought that for the average consumer alu is easier and more likely to be recycled than glass. Although in my office (where the majority have post-graduate qualifications) 90% are incapable of working out whether a can goes in the recycling or refuse bin.

I prefer cans because they are lighter to transport and my kerbside recycling service collects them.

Kerbside recycling takes cans, bottles, plastic, cardboard and paper all in one bin here - is that unusual?

Glass deposit worked fine up here until Barrs canned it. Smaller distributors still do it. Germany reuses glass everywhere, basically if its glass its on a depisit

Reusable bottles.  Most beer in Belgium seems to come in the same bottles, even the Guinness.  They are all deposit paid so you take them back, get some cash, buy some more.  Difficult to beat really

I get my milk from a local farmers market in reusable glass bottles. There's a £2 deposit on each one. There is something very soothing about turning up with an empty, and getting a full one for a £1. Means, all in all, I've not had to recycle any bottles for a year or more now.

is that unusual?

there is no 'usual'. Theres no real joined up strategy to recycling in the UK. Local authorities are required to do some recycling - but its up to them what they collect, how they collect it and what markets they find (or fail to find) for what they collect.