The way you’ve worded that suggested to me that there isn’t an actual solution so, for the people who didn’t click through, I’ll point out that the article concludes: “more sustainable alternatives to plastic bottles exist for all three types of beverage”.
That said, in order to compare the environmental impact, there has to be some kind of weighting between the energy cost of manufacture and the direct environmental pollution (discarded plastic choking marine animals; microplastics; etc). I’m not sure it even makes sense to try to combine them. Climate change is an imminent existential threat, whereas microplastics are poisoning us but not obviously killing us.
I also wonder what they assumed for the energy source in the glass manufacture. It is mostly fossil fuels at present, but the industry is moving towards electrification.
The way you’ve worded that suggested to me that there isn’t an actual solution so, for the people who didn’t click through, I’ll point out that the article concludes: “more sustainable alternatives to plastic bottles exist for all three types of beverage”.
That said, in order to compare the environmental impact, there has to be some kind of weighting between the energy cost of manufacture and the direct environmental pollution (discarded plastic choking marine animals; microplastics; etc). I’m not sure it even makes sense to try to combine them. Climate change is an imminent existential threat, whereas microplastics are poisoning us but not obviously killing us.
I also wonder what they assumed for the energy source in the glass manufacture. It is mostly fossil fuels at present, but the industry is moving towards electrification.