Striving for a zero waste lifestyle involves work. The work falls into two categories--lots of cooking and research. Both have their rewards. I have found that homemade pizza is better than delivery pizza, homemade bread is better than bread from the store, and my homemade pasta sauce is to die for. So the rewards of cooking from scratch are obvious.
The rewards from research are more subtle, but just as gratifying. Trying to know where everything I buy comes from and where it will ultimately end up has completely changed my buying habits. Zero waste pressures the consumer to buy durable quality goods. This has the delightful result of finding oneself surrounded by quality things. It seems obvious now that I write it down, but there is a quiet sea change when one lives one's life using dish towels instead of paper towels, a badger bristle brush and soap instead of shaving cream from a can--it's hard to explain the cumulative effect of dozens of small things like that. Another effect is the complicated dance between carbon emissions and landfill. Of course carbon emissions trump all; I consider climate change to be the most pressing problem of our time. So I do not drive an hour just so I can buy reasonably priced bulk olive oil instead of buying olive oil in a glass bottle at my local grocery store.
This weighing of emissions and landfill can get very complicated very quickly, and I know I'm in over my head, this not being my background, but I am trying to improve and learn as much as I can. I am coming at zero waste from a housewife perspective. I have researched whether my last diary was wrong about priority in recycling. There are conflicting views on whether plastic or glass is superior, kindly pointed out to me in the comments by fellow Kossack Jawis. I am exploring in more detail the pros and cons of each in this diary, but the short answer is that I was wrong. A plastic container is better than a glass container when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions, even if the glass container is recycled and made from recycled glass, and the plastic container is made from virgin plastic and incinerated.
But first my standard disclaimer: Zero waste is not the most important thing a person can do to reduce their carbon footprint. Taking public transportation over driving, particularly for a daily commute, weatherproofing one's home and turning down the thermostat, cutting down on air travel, switching to renewable energy sources, avoiding factory-farmed meat and most importantly political action to get the Republican climate deniers out of Congress are all bigger priorities in fighting climate change. Don't use zero waste as an excuse to rest on your green laurels.
So why is recycling important? Focusing on trash absolutely is more important from a zero waste perspective. At this point I have settled into a groove with my trash. Thanks to my zero waste efforts and Boston's excellent all-inclusive single-stream recycling, I have very little on an everyday basis. I have non-compostable food waste, food packaging plastic bags and wrap, floss, and in the cooler months the occasional stocking with runs. I know, I know, a zero waste person has no business wearing something as disposable as pantyhose. I tell myself that my skirts last much longer than my slacks, so it's not so bad. And I'm experimenting with an open-bottom girdle and stockings (that way I only have to throw away one stocking if there is a run). Mea culpa--stockings are my environmental vice.
But I digress! My point is that I've gotten my trash down to the smallest I'm willing to go, and I don't feel too bad about the few plastic bags that my food comes in since I reuse those to tightly wrap my non-compostable food trash during the week so I only use a single, mostly empty kitchen trash bag on trash day without odors. So recycling is my focus.
Using my own containers for shopping at the bulk bins and the deli and butcher counters cuts back quite a bit. My sneakiest score was finding bulk pasta at a local Italian restaurant wholesaler--one box of twenty pounds of pasta, in two ten-pound plastic bags. I used to recycle one or two pasta boxes a week. It was also half the price of the same brand at the store. Still, on average I am recycling the equivalent of a kitchen trash bag a week or more.
Glass vs. plastic doesn't apply to most things I buy. I buy organic olive oil and it comes in glass bottles. Wine, organic coconut oil and tahini, and my CSA's apple cider vinegar all come in glass bottles and jars. I have a choice with nutritional supplements, but the glass ones are shipped with bubble wrap so plastic is the obvious way to go there. And any time there is an ultra-concentrated product, it is superior from an emissions point of view even if it comes in a non-recyclable plastic bag. For example, instead of using shampoo I wash my hair with Dove soap. I tried the no-poo method, definitely did not work for me. And then I tried Dr. Bronner's castile soap to wash my hair but it harshed it out too much. So I use my regular Dove soap and follow up with diluting Dr. Bronner's ultra-concentrated citrus conditioner to balance the pH (and yes I know vinegar in water also works for this but I was tired of smelling like a salad). For laundry I bought a Wonder Ball so I only use a spoonful or so of concentrated Cold Water Tide for a triple load at my laundromat to give it a little oomph.
And when it comes to durable items, if there is a choice between glass and plastic I am finding that glass is the durable winner, hands down. I am loving my Pryex bowls for food storage in my pantry, fridge and freezer--plastic stains, decays and absorbs odors.
But in those cases where I have a choice between plastic and glass in a disposable container, am I using magical thinking in preferring glass over plastic? This was my link from my previous diary on what really happens to plastic recycling.
Misconception # 6: Using plastic containers conserves energy. When the equation includes the energy used to synthesize the plastic resin, making plastic containers uses as much energy as making glass containers from virgin materials, and much more than making glass containers from recycled materials. Using refillables is the most energy conservative.
Glass can be recycled over and over again into containers without any loss of strength and it is a very environmentally friendly substance. Plastic cannot be recycled into other plastic containers of equal strength, and with several cycles will end up in landfill.
On the other hand, as Jawis points out, plastic in landfills does not offgas greenhouse gases, and the big issue is that glass containers are heavier than plastic ones. If there was no transportation involved, glass would be the obvious choice. But emissions from shipping products and transporting recycling waste add up so quickly that recycling glass can even be worse for climate change than using virgin plastic, or even glass.
These are Jawis' comments
Glass offers the least environmental benefits of any major recycled material. The energy savings from glass recycling are very low and can even be negative if the glass has to be shipped far for remanufacturing. Also, the only resource being saved is sand, which there is no shortage of. Using recycled aluminum uses about 1/10th of the energy as virgin. Ferrous metals are also up there. Plastics and paper also provide benefits greater than glass recycling, but there is more uncertainty based on quality and what the products are being produced. Numerous life-cycle assessment studies will back this up.
Also, according to the EPA WARM model, composting mixed yard wastes leads to greater GHG emissions than sending them to a landfill. This is because leaves and branches produce very little methane and most of the embedded carbon remains sequestered in the landfill.
My overall point is that waste management is a large complex system. There are numerous economic and environmental objectives to consider, and we shouldn't make blanket statements without being familiar with the research.
EPA WARM - Life-cycle GHG emissions model for waste management. The documentation for the various modules gives a good overview of the research.
These are results from a Canadian life-cycle model that I had handy.
GHG Savings (IWM Model)
Aluminum - 5000 kg CO2e/Mg
Plastic (PET/PE) - 3000 kg CO2e/Mg
Paper 3000 kg CO2e/Mg
Ferrous 1000 kg CO2e/Mg
Glass 400 kg/CO2e/Mg
Other solid waste cycle models include MSW-DST and EASEWASTE.
So am I thinking with my gut when I recoil against seagulls' systems filled with plastic and the plastic island of trash floating in the Pacific? Glass sinks to the bottom and ultimately will turn back into sand--in this case the heavier weight is a plus. But of course recycling has nothing to do with this--recycled plastic doesn't end up in the ocean. It ends up being made into park benches and reusable shopping bags and things. I also have a visceral reaction to the infinite recyclability of glass vs the degraded recyclability of plastic but should use facts and reasoning to determine my behavior. Emissions are more important than saving landfill space.
I do disagree with the point about composting, both on a visceral and rational level. According to this link, composting is not calculated correctly using governmental landfill models.
The calculation tool was originally developed for landfill gas projects and, as such, appears to discriminate against composting. This is because counting of emission reductions for landfill projects starts when the landfill is closed and covered, which is usually about 11 years after the project commences. At this point initial methane reductions are large which means that so too are the financial rewards.
For composting, emissions are reduced from the start of the project and when the counting commences, it does so at a slow rate, which means it receives comparatively less financial reward.
Also my composting has very little yard waste and is mostly food scraps and paper. I would assume that food scraps in landfills gives off considerable methane, as opposed to branches and leaves. Composting is a better way of handling food scrap methane.
But back to plastic and glass. Here is a handy chart showing, yes, glass is at the bottom of the list of reducing greenhouse gases through recycling, based partly on the EPA WARM model.
And for a final answer, at least with regards to greenhouse gases, this wine bottle link is definitive.
That is, all aesthetic issues aside, is there a real environmental motivation to using plastic wine bottles – do they really reduce the carbon footprint of the wine they hold?
-snip-
Of course, there are lots of other issues with plastic bottles that we haven’t talked about, including possible contaminants in plastic, aging potential, general aesthetics, and the impact of extracting raw materials on aspects of the environment other than CO2 emission. However, when we are talking about the carbon footprint, plastic bottles clearly have a lower impact on the Earth.
When I'm wrong, I'm wrong! And at least now I'm not going to feel bad about my plastic pill and ketchup bottles. But I do wish I lived in wine country where I could return the bottles for reuse, because I don't think I can bring myself to drink wine from a plastic bottle. I assume the disagreement with my original link is due to comparing containers of the same weight, when usually a plastic container is much lighter and flimsier than a glass container with equal capacity.