Which are most environmentally friendly, in order? Glass Bottles Cartons (tetra-pack) Cans Plastic bottles
Glass is the best, you can reuse it. Then cans, recycling them is pretty effecient. It's not very effecient recycling paper (cartons), but it biodegrades pretty easily. Plastic is bad. Bad plastic bad.
A friend told me that tetra packs....the plastic coated cardboard cartons that you buy juice or milk in are especially bad as there is no means of recycling them at all. So, I switched to milk delivered by the milkman, glass bottles you wash out and return, plus I am keeping are local milkround going....but the juice thing is tricky.....you can get bottled juice, but not everywhere and it is expensive.
Yeah juice isn't to big of a problem but you can't get milk in bottles over here anymore, just tetra-pack or plastic.
Which plastic?? Some plastics are recycleable and can be made into new stuff. Which paper products? As has been noted, some coated papers can not be recycled. BEST 1)glass jars (re-usable as is) 2)other glass (recycleable, or if smashed up small it's just sand) 3)metal cans (recycleable, steel is the most recycled material in the US) 4)compostable paper 5)recyclable paper 6)recycleable plastic 7)non-recycleable paper 8)non-recycleable plastic (non-renuable resource) WORST What paper or plastic is recycleable? A practical answer can be found from your recyceling center. Some take some things, some take others. (Damn, I spell lousey.)
If you buy those 4L jugs of milk at convenient stores, they offer a 75cent refund if you bring back your empty jug, which i'm sure they send back to the company, which reuses them.
Quite a lot of plastic is recyclable. However plastic needs to be sorted before it is recycled as plastics need to be done like for like. Some plastics if recycled together can react during the melting process and cause a few problems. Also another problem with plastic is the fact that recycled material is not as nice as teh virgin material. I was working in a factory that started to use skinning on its products which was a way to reduce costs and use more recycled plastic while using the minimum amount of virgin material. There is a lot of work going into re using synthetic material for things in the construction industry. IE Rubber from old tyres being used in the construction of roads. Matt
I don't know about the US -I have lived there but that was about twelve years ago- but here in the Netherlands we re-use our plastic coke bottles, or the large ones at least, not the little ones. We don't just recycle them, we hand them in for a refund just like Lucyinthesky says, so there isn't that much sorting and processing involved. I personally like those bottles best, although I don't drink that much coke & other softdrinks anymore. Glass is a lot heavier and also more breakable. I do drink a lot of soy milk, and it only comes in cartons, so yes I have to throw those out with the garbage... Also, about a year ago they stopped taking in cans seperately, claiming they can easily seperate them at the landfill using powerful magnets. I can't help but wonder if that's actually happening, or whether a lot of the cans we toss in the regular garbage now stay there... But they just don't take them seperately anymore, the containers are gone and the recycling centers don't take them... (No, I don't have a lot of faith in those kind of new things... at least not at first, so often they come up with these great ideas but it turns out the magnets aren't powerful enough, or not all landfills are using them yet... I do believe they'll get it working eventually but I'm also afraid a lot will slip by while they're ironing out the bumps)
