A recent study warned that manufacturing glass containers consumes a lot of energy and resources, making them 4 times worse than plastic bottles, as researchers from Southampton assessed the impact of different types of beverage packages, including plastic bottles, aluminum cans and milk cans, and their effect on Environment and health.
According to what was reported by The Daily Mail, plastic bottles are definitely harmful to the environment, as their manufacture requires large amounts of energy, moreover, they last long after disposal and have the ability to decompose and spread as plastic particles believed to be harmful to health, however, the team concluded The overall effect of glass bottles is worse once the energy footprint and damage from resource extraction are taken into account.
On top of that, bottles are often discarded after one use nowadays, they said – although they can be reused 12 to 20 times, and the team concluded that the most environmentally friendly beverage containers are milk and juice cans and 100% aluminum cans. %.
The paper’s author and environmental scientist Alice Brock of the University of Southampton said that an enormous amount of energy is needed to heat the raw materials to make glass.” .
“As the raw materials for glass melt, gaseous pollutants such as sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide can be released, and since glass requires mining the materials to produce it – silica sand, soda ash, and dolomite – this has all the environmental impacts associated with mining.”.”
Dr Brooke explained that these include land degradation, dust emissions and the risk of mining runoff that pollutes water sources and harms health.
Moreover, extracting silica sand can lead to silicosis, an occupational health disease in which inhalation of crystalline silica dust causes inflammation and scarring of lung tissue – a permanent disease with no treatment..
According to researchers, about a portion of the raw materials that go into producing glass is lost due to the greenhouse effect that stimulates carbon dioxide and other gases..
Dr Brooke told the newspaper: “Glass is surpassing plastic in its negative contributions to climate change, freshwater and toxicity, ocean acidification and so-called freshwater nutrients, a phenomenon in which nutrient-rich water causes dangerous levels of algal growth. I think the implications of this research are That we must move to reuse bottles and cans, only recycling is not enough, .
“We need to change our way of thinking and move to things like bottle refilling, bottle return plans, and the like if we’re going to reduce these environmental impacts.While cartons have been found to be less harmful to the environment in general than bottles and plastics, they still contain plastic elements..
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