Drinks definitely taste better from glass bottles than from plastic ones.
Thank you, @Aspenglow. Typos have become more frequent since the hand-crushing a couple of years ago.
No worries. 
Typos in thread titles make me a little nuts, but in this case, someone flagged it.
Always happy to fix them!
Yo!
Typos bug me, too. But in this case it was as an apology for hijacking the thread into a “How do you garnish a Bloody Mary?” free-for-all.
I have switched to buying beer in cans rather than bottles for the most part, for reasons mentioned above with glass manufacture and recycling. I am assuming aluminum cans are more easily recycled and desirable compared to glass (please correct if I am wrong).
Plastic is another matter and I try to limit the amount of plastic I am buying and using. I think rather than make massive changes that will be fairly disruptive, as mentioned plastics have their place in a lot of applications, we should focus on eliminating some plastics from our consumer-driven economy - mainly single use plastics.
Plastic bags are a major source of pollution and I am not sure if stuffing them into “recycling” containers at the grocery store actually means they are getting turned into something else or just sent to the landfill. Plastic straws are another convenience item that we can probably do without. Bubble wrap - we can do better. While single-use plastic water bottles have their place, the little caps are an everywhere litter - a better design would be an improvement.
Here is a great Frontline documenting the problem and the way the plastics industry has been using smoke and mirrors for years to help people feel good about recycling while actively working to limit the amount of plastic being recycled:
I’ve noticed that beers I’d normally buy in bottles is now only in cans. The brewery down the beach sells their beer in cans.
Baking soda is your friend. We used to make sun pickles. I would get used gallon/half gallon pickle jars from my work. I don’t pickle anymore, but I use the jars for other stuff. I wash them, put half a cup of baking soda in, close the lid, shake them up, and let them stand overnight. The next day I wash them again, and no pickle smell.
Actually, depending on the type, plastic can be much harder to recycle. Anything that isn’t high density polyethylene (HDPE) or polyethylene terephthalate (PETE) is likely to be thrown into a landfill even if it does make it to a recycler. While it is technically possible to reprocess polypropylene (PP) and polystyrene (PS) few recyclers do because of how difficult and often contaminated these materials are. Low density polyethylene can be recycled but it typically isn’t worth it for the amount of energy and effort to the small yield of usable material, and the only ways to recycle polyvinylchloride (PVC) or polycarbonate plastics is by grinding or shredding and using them as a low grade aggregate in composite ‘fake wood’. Furthermore, the process of shredding or grinding plastic waste materials actually produces more microplastic particles which can contaminate the environment as they are carried away by wind and water, so unless there is a good yield from recycling it is often just better to leave these materials intact and dispose them in landfills with liners and impermeable soils.
Of course, plastic is easy to produce, cheap to manufacture into containers and a wide variety of consumer goods, and is beneficial as not only the base material for many products but also in coatings, fillers and insulation, cheap bearings, et cetera. Replacing these with glass, metals, wood, et cetera at the required scale would be extraordinarily expensive, although it would also bring an impetus to build longer lasting and more reparable products, as well as reducing an entire metaclass of environmental pollutants.
Well, I’ve never been to a supper club (missed my chance with The Gobbler) but we can be in full agreement on the use of brandy in Old Fashioneds, Manhattans, and cocktails in general. If your brandy isn’t good enough to be consumed straight or as a B&B, it needs to be used for baked peaches or flaming Christmas pudding, not to ruin a perfectly decent evening.
Of course, the aluminum cans are lined with a polymer epoxy, to keep the carbonation from leaching aluminum into the beverage. So…that.
Stranger
For that reason I’ve stopped asking for ketchup packets when I go to the drive-thru at In-N-Out. I used to always say yes when they asked if I wanted them, just because it was free ketchup, until I realized that’s just generating a lot of empty plastic packets that go to the landfill. Of course, the bottle of ketchup in my fridge is also plastic, but I’m guessing one big plastic bottle is less bad than a lot of little plastic packets.
Because nobody wants broken glass beer bottles on the beach?
It wouldn’t make much sense to get rid of plastic entirely. I don’t even know if it would be possible. I think we should probably look into getting rid of single use plastic containers for soda pop and water. Plastic lenses for glasses don’t seem to be where the big problems with plastic can be found.
Future humans will probably be mining old landfills for precious, precious hydrocarbons. Won’t anybody think of future humans???
Tge future humans will also want the broken bottles on the beach. Today it is garbage, but once the edges have been worn off it is highly collectable sea glass.
I’m curious to know if the “biodegradable” items that look and feel like plastic are also a scam. If not, I like that direction. Give 'em tax breaks and for those not doing it, tax hits.
I’m starting to worry more about fabric pollution.
There’s a fast fashion scary thing going on with all these cheapo clothing. Mostly medium end fashion. But it’s meant for use, at most 3 times and tossed. If you donate it, it’s sent to Ghana or other locations. What isn’t resold for pennies is burnt, piled into landfills or dumped in the oceans. There are tons of metal and plastic in these garments. Zippers and buttons.
One button? You say. There are mountains of them. The fabric itself turns into long strands causing much problems with sea creatures.
It’s a horrible thing. There’s POV show on it. And a show I watched recently called “Brandy Hellville” about the popular fashion store called “Brandy Melville”.
I just want to say that this is exactly how I feel about stuffing in the bird. It is one of life’s most amazing pleasures, and you will never take it from me.
My town’s recycling center separates glass by color, but can’t sell it to be made into new glass. There’s not actually a market for old glass. The town sells all the glass to be used as “clean fill” when paving roads. (They may have stopped making us sort by color, but the issue is whether it was worth continuing made the quarterly newsletter.)
The original ad by (i think) Coca-Cola when they introduced plastic bottles showed a women with kids loading bags of groceries into the back of her station wagon, and then a bag falling over and the bottles bouncing around the back of her car as she drove home. The massage was clear, “these new bottles won’t break and leave an unholy mess behind”. They are also lighter than glass which means less fuel is burned transporting them.
And plastics are pretty benign in land fills. They take up space, like anything else in landfills, but they don’t cause any special problems. And bacteria are already evolving to eat plastic. I don’t think plastic is really a problem. Using up the oil to make it, on the other hand…
The problem is “single use”, not “plastic”.
Tangentially related, i pay extra to get glass glasses. They have superior optics and i see better wearing glass. I’ve broken many many pairs of glasses, and only twice broken a lens. The tempered glass is tough. Usually, the lens can be fitted into repaired or new frames.
(There may be health issues with plasticizers leaking out of plastics into food, but that doesn’t seem to be the issue of this thread.)
And yes, I make stuffing; not dressing. (OK, if all the stuffing won’t fit into the cavity, I’ll make ramekins of dressing out of the rest.)
There would be if more containers were made of glass! :p\
Yeah, one of my local brewpubs only sells their beer in cans, too. I suspect canning operations is cheaper and simpler than dealing with bottles at that scale. I wonder if the beer keeps better in cans as well - at least there is no exposure to light.