How much of a positive impact on both the oil issue along with the energy issue would be addressed?

Question

by Our government simply insisting that all beverages like soda pop, milk, gator-aid etc, all be sold in glass container, that require a deposit like the old pop bottle did, that they be recycled by the original sellers.

I’m not one for government butting into business, but this seems to me to be a simple, non intrusive steep that would cut out so much waste from plastic milk jugs to plastic pop and bottle of water. I know it worked in the past, why would it not make a big difference now?

Answer 1

Most would want the old bottle melted down and remade.

Answer 2

I like your idea, but there are a few problems you need to address:

First, there is already a major infrastructure in place to recycle plastics and aluminum cans. Even some cartons for milk/juice can be recycled now. What your proposing will take this billion-dollar infrastructure and render it pretty useless - which is okay, if we could easily convert these recycling centers to being recycling other material.

Second, the government simply doesn't have the balls to propose such a demanding thing from these companies. With the economy in the pits right now (and recession already starting), it would be foolish for them - from an economic point of view - to begin imposing such harsh restrictions on companies. Not to mention they do not have the infrastructure, themselves, to being handling the recycling of their own materials, the way Breweries do.

If it did come in place in say, five years, then the impact on the energy and oil wouldn't be too large I don't think. You'd still need to transport the materials back to the store to be refilled, the entire cleaning/refilling process will still consume energy, and even still after some point those glass bottles will become no good and you'll have to make more - which is much more expensive than today's aluminum/cartons. Transportation of materials would be about the same here, and I'm sure energy will go down a bit and we would save on materials, I don't see it being a HUGE difference for such a drastic cost to the economy. Not to mention the public is very lazy.

Answer 3

It's a great idea.  

If the total environmental cradle-to-grave costs were included in the price of a product the free market would produce some very different results than what we have today.

Even just a bottle deposit (a nod to the total cost) can profoundly influence behavior.

Answer 4

Then there would be broken glass all over the roadways instead of flatten aluminum and plastic now.  I think the answer is a combination of deposit on all drink containers and a law banning plastic containers made from petroleum.  Biodegradable plastic containers made out of non-petroleum plastic from bio-mass are being worked on.