Comment on If we replace most plastic with a non plastic alternative and would that really be better?
lemming741@lemmy.world 10 months agoA 12 oz glass bottle takes roughly 1100 BTUs to melt the glass for. That is conveniently, roughly, 1.1 cubic ft of natural gas.
60,000 BTU/hr is a very common size for natural gas HVAC furnaces. That’s basically a bottle a minute, just to give people an idea.
There are other inputs of course, but furnace net efficiency is around 2200 BTU/lb
Tywele@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 months ago
In the case of glass bottles don’t forget that they can be reused instead of recycled. Which reduces the amount of energy you use for them.
lemming741@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Yeah it’s like 30% less heat input to melt cullet and you save raw materials. The problem is the quality impact. It’s a similar problem with paper recycling. Part of that is the fault of consumer preference, and I think that’s changing.
www.aigmf.com/…/Cullet Sorting Technologies.pdf
Some info on the challenges
southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
That is an awesome bit of info. I had never even thought about stuff like mirrors interfering in recycling glass
southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
Yeah, I meant to put that in my comment and lost track. My brain was so fried, I’m surprised any of it was intelligible.