Sad, from a nostalgia point of view, but probably a win, environmentally. We have a pipeline to recycle plastic bottles, the mylar pouches are pretty much all single use.
Bottle deposit systems are generally effective. In Sweden, 90-95% of the pet plastic in drink bottles makes it back to a factory to be used as raw material for new bottles. We don't really recycle the hdpe lids or polyester labels, though.
That's not actually a solution when talking single-use either. Remaking the bottles from recycled glass is incredibly energy intensive and not an environmentally friendly process either. Multi-use bottles are much better, but the cleaning required also isn't that simple and also relatively energy intensive (far from remaking the bottles of course).
There's also practical downsides to glass (heavy, breakable), but those are subjective and their relevance highly depends on the use case.
Ideally, we wouldn't buy stuff to drink in any kind of bottle, but just use tap water. possibly just buy some concentrated stuff to then make your actual drink at home. Nothing beats the effectiveness of transporting water through a simple pipe, but that isn't even possible everywhere in the world due to drinking water quality issues...
Good job with reading you did there. Your didn't even make it 8 words in and already decided to comment. Maybe give it another go, if you dare, and try getting a little further this time.
If micro plastics in the water supply is an actual issue long term the tap water will be shot for the whole of most places. Reverse osmosis systems are the only ones I had heard could reliably help, but I haven't gone to extensive on looking into that. Each household may someday need under the sink or such systems if so : /. Unless we can reliably do so at treatment plants and then transport it through the lines without the water getting any back in. With many American cities having water at its current state, I don't see that happening.
Well that would be because the god-king CEO would have like 45k less per year out of his 38,000,000 dollar salary without bonuses and stock value if we were to do that, you fuckin peasant idiot chump. Not only that but their enabling middle management might have as much as $200 less in their annual bonuses. Think for someone else other than yourself for once.
Great, you not only read my mind but you are also spreading gloom about an extremely well known issue. Beautiful.
I don't think I could have lived in society for the past 15 years without hearing about this issue at least 5 times a year, and I'm not sure what made you think otherwise.
So if I ask what a person means with their snark, it means I want the problem to be ignored?
That's a sad and weird way to assume shit, honestly. Because if you actually knew my view, you would know that I think about plastics fucking the human race every day of my life
If you even thought to say that, I can't blame you for your original comment.
Yeah, it's really sad how bad plastic is currently destroying our environment. Humans have to be able to see further into the future than "will I live to see the consequences of my actions? Because if not, I can't worry about them"