What's better for the environment? Tin cans or glass bottles?

Question

Which one can be recycled more easily (a.k.a. takes up less space, uses less time/energy)

Answer 1

Tin can be recycled more easily.

Answer 2

I think you can recycle tin cans better alot of recycling centers don't take glass anymore or at least not the one in my city, but tin can they take.

Answer 3

I prefer glass bottles because you can sell them back to the company and they refill them. Or at least thats what they do with beer bottles, and theres a farm near where i live that does that with goat milk bottles.

But also because i saw a shed once built out of glass bottles. it was like the bottles were stacked kinda like bricks and there was cement in between them to hold it together. There was one really big pickle jar that they filled with plants and it was like a terrarium. So that was pretty amazing.

But i don't really mind aluminum cans because you can use them to make alot of stuff too, our dog's house is covered with them, kinda like shingles. And my sister makes earrings out of them that she can sell for like $20/pair to weird people. haha.

When you're talking about actually melting them down and using them to make other stuff, I don't really know all that much about it. Probably they can more efficiently recycle aluminum because its more common and they have been trying to perfect it for a while. Glass is used less, so they probably don't care about recycling it as much.

Answer 4

Tin cans can be melted down making it possible to reuse the metal they were made with.

Glass bottles can be remelted and made into other glass products.  They can also be ground down into gravel-like pieces and used to pave streets (this kind of street paving is sometimes called glassphalt).

When I was a kid in Los Angeles and we had milkmen delivering milk directly to our houses, Adohr Farms used glass bottles and rewashed them.  I once took a tour through their plant.  The conveyor belts and brushes used on their cleaning machines, I thought, were fascinating to watch.

Recycling glass in this way would be very friendly to the environment.  Unfortunately, glass bottles easily break, unlike the kinds of milk containers we use today.

Harleigh Kyson Jr.

Answer 5

Something tells me that although you can recycle most of the can, the amount of energy and resources required to do so surpasses that of the amount required to recycle a glass bottle (especially when taking in account the initial production of the can). Also, consider the damage that is done to the environment during exploitation for the raw materials required (mining, smelting). Unfortunately, I haven't got any numbers ;

However; with the proper infrastructure in place, the glass bottle would be better for the environment, since it can be washed and reused. To give you an idea:

In some European countries, beverages (carbonized water, lemonade, pop drinks, juices, beer) are sold in solid plastic crates, each containing several glass bottles. The plastic crates make transportation and storage easier, since they can be stacked up. This is what the bugger looks like:

http://www.heidelberger-brauerei.de/serv...

At the supermarket, customers will pay for the product itself (let's say, 24 bottles of 0,33l beer or 6 bottles of 1,0l juice), plus an additional pledge on the crate and on each bottle, which is refundable on return (provided all bottles are intact). The supermarkets will store the empty crates for pick-up by their suppliers (beverage wholesalers or producers/breweries).

The durability and stackability of the crates makes handling and transportation much easier than, let's say, the flimsy cardboard cases used for beer cases in North America.

While the cardboard case basically becomes waste, the plastic crate can be used over and over again (if you take the bottles out and turn them upside down, these crates also provide excellent improvised seats on a construction site or around the camp fire;-)  )

The bottles are cleaned, and then refilled (hopefully, the new content tastes better than the water used for cleaning...) According to Wikipedia, 98% of bottles in Denmark are refillable (the remaining 2% are probably imports), and of these, 98% are returned by the customers to be reused...

Recycling has become a big industry. Let's not forget that re-using is better than recycling!

Answer 6

Tin cans are much better because when making new tin 100% of the recyvled tin can be used.  Glass however loses many of it properties and when making new glass a 20-80 mixture must be used.

Answer 7

I would think the can,if it is aluminum.They can be flattened to take way little space.But glass has been around forever..I am not sure...