Aluminum also takes way less energy and is much cheaper to recycle than to produce new! I think roughly around 2/3rds of all aluminum ever produced is still in use because of that. Don’t remember the exact figure, just remember it from my material science electives from college
meekah@lemmy.world 6 months ago
yeah, absolutely! I’m not trying to say that aluminium is a bad material. Just that it’s not the right choice as a drink container, at least once you convince the population to return bottles to the store (the deposit system here in germany works pretty well. when people don’t want to return the bottles, they put them next to the closest trash can, so homeless people can collect them and return them to the store for a small reward)
pixeltree@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 months ago
There’s a bottle and can deposit system in some states! You pay an extra 5c per beverage and get 5c back by returning the empty container. Only in like 5 states, but it works well. They don’t get reused, just recycled, but I think that’s pretty much the only way plastic bottles get recycled here, as most recycling is extremely contaminated.
Sorry not disagreeing with you about beverage container material choices! I just like chiming in with more info because I really enjoyed those packaging science classes I took. If I could live my life over again I’d do that instead of software tbh. Glass containers being reused instead of recycled is the dream, imo, but in the current US if you replaced all plastic beverage containers with aluminum ones that would still be a massive win. Transportation energy costs should only improve, so as time goes on that will matter less and less in the equation, but you can also achieve denser packing easier with aluminum packaging than glass. Glass containers don’t take non-cylindrical shapes as easily, or rather, cylindrical containers are far easier, more reliable to produce, and in general a lot more durable. If you swapped from plastic bottles to hexagonal aluminum ones, where you can achieve near perfect packing efficiency, that would be amazing. Far more containers per load, a roughly equivalent weight per container, made from a material that’s ACTUALLY recyclable, and (this I don’t actually know but I believe to be true) more easily automatically sorted out from contaminated recycling, that also has a financial incentive built into it to be recycled? That would be really really really good. Ultimately glass is better, the reusability is REALLY nice and glass also recycles incredibly well, and isn’t harmful as a pollutant, and also doesn’t require a questionably toxic (I believe BPA is an endocrine disruptor, but this isn’t something I know for sure) plastic lining? Oooooo yeah. That’s where it is.
Also just a fun fact, blue glass is like incredibly contaminating color wise, it only takes a tiny bit of blue glass to color a load of clear glass it’s being added to blue! Not a problem with the material, just cool.
meekah@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Ohh thanks for chiming in! A lot of cool info in your comment, especially that last part about the bumps at the bottom of glass bottles.
I can only agree that aluminum is better than plastic, but I’m not sure about hexagonal cans. The cans we know nowadays are insanely well engineered and only use a minute amount of material, taking advantage of the pressure of carbonized drinks. I don’t think there’s any way to increase packing efficiency of Aluminium cans without increasing material thickness to an unreasonable degree. But regardless, if all drink containers were regulated to be Aluminium (or glass), it would certainly be a big improvement.