Glass jars aren’t reused because of the infrastructure required to reuse them. The only glass I can think of which is reused outside of the point of sale are soda and beer bottles, and that is only usually at restaurants which will collect the bottles they use to ship back.
Outside of a massive sorting facility in every supermarket generating no value for the store owner, the only other way to ensure bottle reuse would be subscription delivery like milk used to be or hyper focused stores which only sell a few products like how grocery shopping used to be.
Ok, but even communist run systems wouldn’t require the massive sorting system of hundreds of different types of glass jars. At best, they’d force standardization so there are only a few jar types in the country and make all labels easy to remove.
However, what most likely would happen is everything is going to be bring your own container and the shoppers are going to be responsible for cleaning the old jars.
Robust glass bottle recycling already exists and it just works. Here it’s called Pfand (deposit) and for drink (and some other) containers a law or for other containers an agreement specifies that a store has to take the containers and hand back the deposit for any type of container the store sells. Alcohol bottles apart from beer are for some reason usually not included in this scheme but it’s also used for plastic reusable and with a different deposit for single use cans and plastic bottles.
That is an implementation detail and at least here in Germany typically not the case for glass and thick walled reusable plastic. Cleaning glass bottles and reusing them is the norm here and the system exists country wide so it is literally workable at scale and other countries could if they wanted just copy legislation and the physical infrastructure for this to happen.
It apparently also has some flaws ( regulatory capture will do that to laws under capitalism) but the last sentence of the Germany section basically is enough evidence that this kind of system works and reuses bottles.
At any given time, an estimated 2 billion beer bottles are in circulation in Germany, each of which sees an average of 36 reuses.
Moreover even if not reusing deposit still gives way better return rates than any other method of recycling, at the very least keeping trash in a managed somewhat circular system.
The Car battery recycling structure is also deposit based and very successful in recovering the toxic lead in these things. So even non reuse deposits have great upside to the alternative of not having deposits.
Yeah. The system can be very successful in certain cases even if it only pushes recycling.
My statements were made in the context of a maximalist scenario. Every container sold is made to be reused and recycling is seen as a failure. In a maximalist scenario, I see a lot more breaking down in a way where a beverage industry like beer standardizing on a bottle size wouldn’t.
For many years we have bought good food partly for good reusable packaging. One USA boycott we break is a brand of decent peanut butter that has really skookum reusable jars which we keep for midterm food preservation, such as vacuum packing our dehydrated fruits.
One place we shop even packages bulk goods into nice standard jars and charges a deposit. We either reuse the jars at home or stock them with our reusable shopping bags for return on the next shop.
In addition, I am seeing more “refillery” stores, where as you say, it’s BYO containers for cooking oil, soap, dry goods, etc.
We used to have a zero waste shop here but its a shame how much more they charge even if you buy in bulk. I kinda get it they are going to cost more but if I could at least bulk buy for vaguely similar prices to any other shop it would be far more appealing.
Yeah, it isn’t impossible. However, I expect there would be a radical rethink of food supply chains. This would likely include more grocery stores adopting the Aldi/Trader Joe’s model of fewer brands and selection of product since the cost of differentiation gets borne more by the store. There would likely be an increase in public markets with several vendors as each vendor is effectively a brand of food.
I think enshittification will hit and don’t grocery stores will either stop offering container sanitization as a service or will start selling the service independently and incorporating the higher cost in shelf products. Grocery stores operate on thin margins, so I expect this cost to get transferred to consumers somehow.
I also think a lot of existing companies will fight this tooth and nail as their bottling and canning lines provide a massive barrier to entry for competition. I also think a lot of customers will fight this since it radically changes how they shop.
Yes, the primary strategy here is to reeducate shoppers so that people demand more seasonal food, from closer, that supports their food sovereignty, and is higher quality and more nutritious with less processing.
We can look to initiatives such as the slow food movement, and food cooperatives, and even buying clubs. Wherever possible, diminish oligarchy by buying from the farmer, or the small vendor.
We also need to remind everybody that more packaging is simply just stealing the future from your descendants.
Outside of a massive sorting facility in every supermarket generating no value for the store owner
We already do exactly that for plastic bottles in Germany. You pay 5-30ct premium on each bottle and get that back when disposing of the bottles in the sorting machine. Participation is close to 100%.
For glass, it at least gets sorted into white/green/brown glass to make recycling easier (not in the supermarket though, just containers positioned in residential streets / recycling centers).
Glass jars aren’t reused because of the infrastructure required to reuse them. The only glass I can think of which is reused outside of the point of sale are soda and beer bottles, and that is only usually at restaurants which will collect the bottles they use to ship back.
Outside of a massive sorting facility in every supermarket generating no value for the store owner, the only other way to ensure bottle reuse would be subscription delivery like milk used to be or hyper focused stores which only sell a few products like how grocery shopping used to be.
Right in the capitalism…
Ok, but even communist run systems wouldn’t require the massive sorting system of hundreds of different types of glass jars. At best, they’d force standardization so there are only a few jar types in the country and make all labels easy to remove.
However, what most likely would happen is everything is going to be bring your own container and the shoppers are going to be responsible for cleaning the old jars.
Robust glass bottle recycling already exists and it just works. Here it’s called Pfand (deposit) and for drink (and some other) containers a law or for other containers an agreement specifies that a store has to take the containers and hand back the deposit for any type of container the store sells. Alcohol bottles apart from beer are for some reason usually not included in this scheme but it’s also used for plastic reusable and with a different deposit for single use cans and plastic bottles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container-deposit_legislation
But a lot of container-deposit legislation as mentioned in the Wikipedia article pushes the container into recycling programs, not reuse.
That is an implementation detail and at least here in Germany typically not the case for glass and thick walled reusable plastic. Cleaning glass bottles and reusing them is the norm here and the system exists country wide so it is literally workable at scale and other countries could if they wanted just copy legislation and the physical infrastructure for this to happen.
It apparently also has some flaws ( regulatory capture will do that to laws under capitalism) but the last sentence of the Germany section basically is enough evidence that this kind of system works and reuses bottles.
Moreover even if not reusing deposit still gives way better return rates than any other method of recycling, at the very least keeping trash in a managed somewhat circular system. The Car battery recycling structure is also deposit based and very successful in recovering the toxic lead in these things. So even non reuse deposits have great upside to the alternative of not having deposits.
Yeah. The system can be very successful in certain cases even if it only pushes recycling.
My statements were made in the context of a maximalist scenario. Every container sold is made to be reused and recycling is seen as a failure. In a maximalist scenario, I see a lot more breaking down in a way where a beverage industry like beer standardizing on a bottle size wouldn’t.
Some of us kind of live that way already!
For many years we have bought good food partly for good reusable packaging. One USA boycott we break is a brand of decent peanut butter that has really skookum reusable jars which we keep for midterm food preservation, such as vacuum packing our dehydrated fruits.
One place we shop even packages bulk goods into nice standard jars and charges a deposit. We either reuse the jars at home or stock them with our reusable shopping bags for return on the next shop.
In addition, I am seeing more “refillery” stores, where as you say, it’s BYO containers for cooking oil, soap, dry goods, etc.
We used to have a zero waste shop here but its a shame how much more they charge even if you buy in bulk. I kinda get it they are going to cost more but if I could at least bulk buy for vaguely similar prices to any other shop it would be far more appealing.
Yeah, it isn’t impossible. However, I expect there would be a radical rethink of food supply chains. This would likely include more grocery stores adopting the Aldi/Trader Joe’s model of fewer brands and selection of product since the cost of differentiation gets borne more by the store. There would likely be an increase in public markets with several vendors as each vendor is effectively a brand of food.
I think enshittification will hit and don’t grocery stores will either stop offering container sanitization as a service or will start selling the service independently and incorporating the higher cost in shelf products. Grocery stores operate on thin margins, so I expect this cost to get transferred to consumers somehow.
I also think a lot of existing companies will fight this tooth and nail as their bottling and canning lines provide a massive barrier to entry for competition. I also think a lot of customers will fight this since it radically changes how they shop.
Yes, the primary strategy here is to reeducate shoppers so that people demand more seasonal food, from closer, that supports their food sovereignty, and is higher quality and more nutritious with less processing.
We can look to initiatives such as the slow food movement, and food cooperatives, and even buying clubs. Wherever possible, diminish oligarchy by buying from the farmer, or the small vendor.
We also need to remind everybody that more packaging is simply just stealing the future from your descendants.
We already do exactly that for plastic bottles in Germany. You pay 5-30ct premium on each bottle and get that back when disposing of the bottles in the sorting machine. Participation is close to 100%.
For glass, it at least gets sorted into white/green/brown glass to make recycling easier (not in the supermarket though, just containers positioned in residential streets / recycling centers).
There also is a deposit on glass bottles in germany. Just not on all of them, but the same applies to plastic bottles
I buy glass jars and bottles specifically to reuse them extensively.
Swing top bottles are great.