I imagine all plastics will be out of the question. I’m wondering about what ways food packaging might become regulated to upcycling in the domestic or even commercial space. Assuming energy remains a $ scarce $ commodity I don’t imagine recycling glass will be super practical as a replacement. Do we move to more unpackaged goods and bring our own containers to fill at markets? Do we start running two way logistics chains where a more durable glass container is bought and returned to market? How do we achieve a lower energy state of normal in packaging goods?
We gave up on them because they are less good looking. It’s dead easy to sanitise glass. You can do it chemically, thermally, or radiologically (with UV through to gamma rays).
Your quote ended before this:
It is certainly easy to sanitize clean glass that you have controlled from mold to filling with product. It is a little harder to reliably sanitize glass that the occasional customer has used for their own purposes.
When a narrow-necked bottle has been used as a smoker’s ashtray - or an addict’s sharps container - it is not “dead easy” to “sanitize” that bottle. Our cleaning process needs to be able to deal with such “contaminants”.
It’s trivial to automatically recognise and reject contaminated bottles. They differ in appearance and mass