Recycle Now, the organization putting on Recycle Week, which begins today, has a very cool little animated video showing the process that beer bottles go through during the recycling process.
Glass Bottles – how they are recycled from RecycleNow on Vimeo.
Better than nothing, but I like how Germany does it: collect from customers, wash, sanitize, refill, relabel. Still to this day, a bottle without two rings around it from repeated use doesn’t look right to me.
I do wonder if the costs and chemicals involved in shipping, cleaning, sanitizing, sorting, relabeling, etc. aren’t equal to those involved in just recycling the glass and starting fresh. Plus, it works for high volume bottles like Coke, but what would you do with a bottle from a small brewery that made its way across the country, and is a different color/shape than the other bottles?
Better yet do it the way most small American brewer’s do it – Draft only ! Or even better – Brew pub serving tanks
(think globally, drink locally – Mike Hale, Hale Brewig Co. – Seattle)
Good point. It’s pretty easy to ‘recycle’ a keg!