Is It Feasable To Go Back To Glass Bottles With Deposits Like In The Old Days?

[ToraToraTora]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-42455378
I don't really know the details but there was a time when we truly recycled bottles etc by actually reusing and charging a deposit. Now that china won't take our recyclable plastic could it be time to look again at this? Also there must be huge emission cost in the fuel to ship them to China and to re manufacture so we'd be saving that too.

[cassa333]

Don't know if it's feasible or not but I think it is a good idea.

[kvalidir]

It's generally done in Germany far more than here , they have a little deposit on bottles and you recycle them back at the store generally, so yes the UK needs to do more, and glass is the way I buy bottled water, I never buy plastic, so hopefully :)

[vulcan42]

Hoe does China recycle the waste plastic?

[ToraToraTora]

it seems a no brainer to me, especially now we have a plastic waste problem.

[EDDIE51]

The cost of storing the returned bottles, cleaning and sterilizing them and reusing them is a lot more than the cost of a new bottle.
Glass is recycled and recycled, scrap glass called 'cullet' is an important component of new glass. There is even a market price for scrap glass / Cullet that varies with demand just like scrap metal.
http://www.wrap.org.uk/content/glass-4.
Clear glass cullet is worth more than colored Cullet as it can be used for any colour of new glass.
It is important because it needs a lot less energy to make glass from cullet than from scratch using Silica.

[ToraToraTora]

Vulcan, they have huge factories making things out of it like clothing etc.

[vulcan42]

Thanks Tora, could we not do that?

[ToraToraTora]

yes perhaps but we do not have the capacity at the moment, that's another possibility.

[237SJ]

Maybe if people went back to drinking tap water and used refillable bottles there wouldn't be such a problem. I remember when the whole "you must drink 8 glasses of water a day" came about and everybody started buying bottled water. A very clever marketing ploy by the bottled water companies and they have a lot to answer for

[dannyk13]

Most councils (if not all) these days recycle plastic bottles.

[bhg481]

danny - do they recycle them themselves or send them for recycling (to China?)?

[Gromit]

No it is not feasible.
Supermarkets work on an economy of scale. They shift vast amounts from large diaries and brewers.

That replaced the local shops who were supplied from farm diaries and town breweries.

To try to revert back would hugely increase prices.

[dannyk13]

Bhg, I don't know, only know that they collect them.

[mikey4444]

I would like to see this happen but the infrastructure isn't present to support it at the moment.

I seem to recall an advertising campaign a few years ago, called "Get it in Glass"...whatever happened to that ?

When I was a boy in the 60's, money back from empty bottles used to be a valuable addition too my pocket money !

[EDDIE51]

^ me to. there was a shop outside the local outdoor swimming pool that sold ,bottles with a deposit. Few people could be bothered to return them. My mate and I went round and picked up a few dozen bottles and took them back. We got enough for 2 ice creams each and a ticket into the pool. Happy days.

[EDDIE51]

The sad truth is that plastic is now so cheap a plastic bottle costs a lot less than the deposit on a glass bottle.

[emmie]

i can't see it happening, the penny on the bottle was so long ago, and we are so used to plastic. I was surprised to read this story earlier, that we export much of our plastic waste. No wonder they don;t want it any more.

[hc4361]

Could we live in a world without plastic? Computers, tvs, washing machines, guttering, packaging, clothing, carpets, cars, motorbikes, planes - it's in everything

[emmie]

yes it is and no we can't do without it, but we must find a way to better dispose of it.

[youngmafbog]

It would be really nice to think we could do something.

personally I reckon we need to stop, take a deep brth and consider all options and certainly not knee jerk into one route. Quite possibly the answer lies in a number of the options being utilised.

Not sure the deposit idea will work but hey, lets not discount it until it has been looked at.

Me, I dont drink bottled water, tap is good enough for me - or filtered and cooled through the fridge in the summer.