Ever thought about the carbon foot print of broad acre croping and the emitions generated shipping grain products? It would be amongst the highest C02 emition figures in the world, then the grain products are re distributed and processed to make other food products, more emitions, or used as live stock feed, more emitions. Industries are split when calculating C02 emitions but we all consume these products in one way or another and if we want or have to use these products then we are all responsible. This is getting way of the subject of PET bottle production, but don't kid your self your enviromentally green when it comes to home brewing. I will probably cop a verbal flogging for this but who care's, let's enjoy our home brewing for what it is, yumy beer. cheers
Excuse my brashness, and forgive me if I offend by saying.... your argument is bullshit. If it was "Beer Drinkers vs Non-Beer Drinkers" then sure, you have a point. However, as far as rattling on about barley production is concerned, the grain is still being produced, whether it be for the major breweries or the HBS market. I should clarify that I speak of the grain specific to beer production, and malting specifically for beer production. If you are a beer drinker, you are tapping into that small percentage of barley production, it doesn't matter how you go about getting to the stage of having a cold one in front of you.
It appears that this thread is becoming a mirror for the topic raised recently
>Here< , but I don't think that was the OP's intention, rather he was being more specific about PET.
As far as recycling is concerned, many people fail to think about the energy consumed in recycling glass, and the inherent issues (see BribieG's post) with non-compatible variants - for example a broken wine glass should not go in the recycling, allegedly it screws with the mix.
Re-USE of existing bottles is clearly the most logical step. Older guys here will remember when the 'milko' used to come to the front porch and deliver bottles of milk, and pick up the empties. Those bottles were taken back to the very same place that the 'milko' picked up his next full inventory for the day, and the cycle was most likely a great system of RE-USE. Some countries in Asia still go with this re-use method with soft drinks (Pakistan, Iran) and also beer (in Malaysia). It might be wrongly moaned about that all these empty bottles are being shipped at a cost of diesel pollution, but no.... just like the old milko's, the drivers aren't making a special trip for just the empties, they pick them up every time they deliver a new shipment of full beverages. The comparatives small increase in a truck's fuel usage with a load of empties is NOTHING compared to he energy/emissions created by a glass recycling industry. Compared to the manufacture of new bottles, there's simply no contest.
The new trendy movement of recycling is only as good as a society's understanding of how things work. I shake my head in disdain when I hear people say "Oh it's OK to buy shit with X amount of packaging, cos it gets recycled". Err, dickheads, how about you make an active choice to purchase stuff/live a lifestyle without supporting the packaging industry to start with ! Let me give you an example (one of many) - cold cuts of smoked ham. So many people buy those pathetic little "Primo" blister packs that are enough for about three sandwiches, instead of doing to the Deli counter in the very same supermarket, and getting some cold cuts that get wrapped in a thin film of plastic and then a small sheet of butcher's paper. Why ? This (ie the Primo" blister pack) sort of retailing & marketed product is a goddamn environmental disaster.
I'm off to look for some statistics related to this topic, so I'll momentarily end this rant here.
