Glass bottles are not perfect. They are lots heavier, which leads to transportation pollution. They also break and hurt people.
As to plastics - You are correct, they do not recycle and when you try to do it, even with a very low ratio of recycled to new plastics you end up with crappy weak plastic - think laundry baskets that have handles that break easily.
i think we should just learn to burn plastics - efficiently and cleanly.
I'm down for completely banning single use plastics: everything from shopping bags to clamshell packaging can go tomorrow IMHO. Same with styrofoam, frankly.
Having said that glass bottles were a nightmare when I was a kid because of littering assholes who would toss them anywhere. Littering is less of an issue these days but I think going back to glass would need to both reward recycling and shame litter bugs. Walking home from the local swimming hole after slicing the bottom of your foot open is no fun.
Yep, the hazards of broken glass are one of the downsides of glass. However, we have that situation now mostly with beer bottles. I routinely pick up roadside trash in my subdivision and much of what I pick up is glass beer bottles.
The other downside (as others have already pointed out) is the weight of heavy glass containers built for reuse. It raises the cost of distribution.
Glass bottles are not perfect. They are lots heavier, which leads to transportation pollution. They also break and hurt people.
As to plastics - You are correct, they do not recycle and when you try to do it, even with a very low ratio of recycled to new plastics you end up with crappy weak plastic - think laundry baskets that have handles that break easily.
i think we should just learn to burn plastics - efficiently and cleanly.