Soda Pop is, for the most part, only sold in plastic bottles. Beer and other alcoholic beverages are all sold in glass bottles. Why?
I always thought it was because light affected alcohol so beer etc is sold in darker bottles to reduce the amount of light that gets in.
I’ve never heard that before, I’ll have to look that up.
Although I don’t think this is the major factor, liquids stored in plastic have a slight plasticky taste. There’s no taste from glass.
You can experiment by buying Schweppes Tonic Water in glass (which is more expensive) and plastic.
Heat would be another reason to use glass, although I’ve never heard of alcoholic drinks being bottles hot.
It is primarily the alcohol that affects the plastic. They did some tries in Sweden last year with beer in special plastic bottles. There were two varieties, one which had a thin layer of SiO[sub]2[/sub] sprayed on the inside, and the other one had some other kind of impermeable layer in between the layers of plastic.
I never tried them, but supposedly the beer tasted OK. It never sold very well though, and I believe that the test was discontinued.
Tiger Stadium (oops, I mean the newish “Comerica Park” sells something called “Budweiser” in plastic bottles all over the place in the stadium. It tastes like crap, but I don’t know if it’s the bottle that has anything to do with it. 
If you look hard enough, there are a couple of little kiosks that’ll sell you a good, honest Labatt’s in a plastic cup. The beer generally doesn’t linger long enough in the cup to have it affect the flavor.
It’s probably for the same reason that (until very recently) you could only buy fresh fruit juice in glass bottles or opaque containers (e.g. cartons).
Glass bottles block certain wavelengths of UV light that cause decomposition of the contents. Plastic bottles (mostly) don’t block UV. Soda is OK in plastic bottles for some reason that I forget at the moment (presumably a higher preservative content); it’s not as affected by the UV.
Recently developed types of plastic block UV- this is why in the last couple of years you might have noticed fruit juice in plastic bottles for the first time.
There are other issues as well… from this link :
Here in Denmark, plastic beer bottles are slowly becoming the standart, they where released in 1999 and have been followed up with quite massive advertising since then.
There is a rather good page with information about their advantages and acceptance at:
http://www.carlsberg.com/Info/Media/News/Press+Releases/2000/Carlsberg’s+PEN+bottle+to+contest+new+product+prize+in+Paris.asp
Cheers,
blinx
Cool, thanks for all the info everybody.
Hahahaha…I just came from the seltzer bottle question, said something about that there.
I think plastic DOES affect the taste of soda, much less the damned allowed use of corn syrup as sweetener instead/along with sugar. My Canadian friends have told me that this is not so in Canada, that plain ol’ sugar is used, it tastes better in their opinion, and that they do not particularly care for American soda.
Back to the point,(ahem)…I think its just that we have a lot of kids now who are not familiar with the taste of soda, etc. in glass bottles , and are indifferent. The soda companies dig this, of course, its cheaper to use plastic I’m sure. As recently as the early Nineties could you still buy soda in glass bottles at your favorite corner store. It was usually sold in 16 oz bottles, and they had the “Big 20” which was an inch or two taller…hahaha…what a contrast to today when they are packaging 24 oz. bottles without blinking…ah, memories…
Joe K, take a trip south of the US border one of these days. Soda made from sugar instead of corn syrup and glass bottles still reign supreme there! No better Coke than Mexican Coke (-a Cola, that is).