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The inertness of glass not only makes it always the first choice for food contact, it's also the most cleanly recycled material on the planet, when it does break. Unlike plastics (which for all practical purposes can't really be recycled), and metals, which require complex separation and realloying, glass can be easily separated visually and reused indefinitely. It is quite likely that the glass in your refrigerator right now contains glass first produced by the Romans.

(Of course, we should just reuse glass containers, like we did when I was a kid - a small deposit is a big motivator for kids to collect bottles for reuse!)




Big caveat that all that recyclability really only works for clear glass.




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