Editor’s note: This is the second part of a small series on recycling and reusing glass containers. The first part can be found here.
Glass is not only endlessly recyclable, but was long considered endlessly reusable: For decades, consumers returned used soft drink, beer, water and milk bottles for reuse.
The bottles made their way back to dairies and beverage manufacturers, who sterilized and refilled the containers, a cycle that could go on for as long as a bottle remained undamaged.
But after World War II, refillable glass bottles began falling out of favor. Single-use steel cans became the more popular container for beer and soda, and paper cartons for milk. Eventually steel was replaced by aluminum and plastic, and by 1998 soft drinks were sold almost exclusively in aluminum and plastic while beer came in aluminum or nonrefillable glass…
