this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2024
163 points (98.2% liked)
Asklemmy
45156 readers
2503 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
PLA (polylactic acid, commonly used for 3D printing) is made from biomass, and is thus sustainably sourced.
Bio-PET is functionally identical to petroleum-based PET, but is readily produced from plants, and is thus sustainably sourced.
I don't think energy is a particularly scarce commodity. We are utilizing only a tiny fraction of the energy readily available to us. We haven't even picked the low-hanging fruit of energy production yet.
We gave up on reusing glass bottles in large part because they were not sanitary. Every boomer has stories of finding cigarette butts in their soda and beer. Previous buyers regularly used their empties as ash trays before turning them in for the deposit, and the cleaning process was not nearly as effective as one would hope.
A better cleaning process would be needed to even consider commercial reuse of consumer glass today. Superheated steam, for example, would burn off pretty much any organic material, and machine inspection would be able to identify remaining contaminants and defects.
We gave up on them because they are less good looking. It's dead easy to sanitise glass. You can do it chemically, thermally, or radiologically (with UV through to gamma rays).
Your quote ended before this:
It is certainly easy to sanitize clean glass that you have controlled from mold to filling with product. It is a little harder to reliably sanitize glass that the occasional customer has used for their own purposes.
When a narrow-necked bottle has been used as a smoker's ashtray - or an addict's sharps container - it is not "dead easy" to "sanitize" that bottle. Our cleaning process needs to be able to deal with such "contaminants".
Both glass and plastic bottles frequently get reused here in germany. Can't say I've ever heard of someone having an unclean on. I don't know where you heard that from but it's clearly outdated or flat out bullshit.