Glass is looking pretty good right about now. Think again! Personally, I love glass. I like glass coffee cups, stained glass, large picture windows, cobalt blue drinking glasses, blown glass ornaments. You name it, if it is glass, I will most likely love it. I am still hoping to make it to Seattle to see Dale Chihuli’s Garden and Glass museum.

Glass is recyclable. An estimate of only 5% of the waste in our landfills is said to be glass. Pretty good compared to paper! That is where the good news ends.
Recycling glass facilities are shutting down North America wide due to the unprofitable price of recyclable glass. It is cheaper to make new glass than to recycle with few exceptions. Beer, wine, pop and liquor are up to 78% recycled over and over again by the Brewers distribution system. Food and cosmetics that use glass jars have no such system in place leading to glass going into our landfills.

Another problem is the cost of transporting glass to facilities. Since there are fewer and fewer facilities, the price of gas to take glass to the nearest facility leaves most municipalities with few options so the vast majority of cities across Canada and USA have cancelled glass recycling programs.

Next problem: who knew that the world could run out of sand. Than’s right: SAND! Yup, the kind used to make glass.

There are at least 24 different types of sand.The sand used to make glass is silica (quartz) sand. It must be at least 95% silicon dioxide and less than .6% iron oxide, otherwise it is just regular sand.

Silica sand is used in golf courses and sports fields, industrial blasting and water filtration, painting and coatings, ceramics and tiles, flooring, mortars, cement, roofing shingles, asphalt, digital components for automobiles, batteries, semiconductors and solar panels.

Sand is the second most exploited resource in the world, 50 billion tonnes of sand per year. Water is the first. There is no way that that much extraction is not going to have an impact! There currently is little to no regulations regulating sand extraction causing“coastline erosion, ecosystem disruption, air pollution causing a severe lung disease called silicosis, aquifer contamination and threats to biodiversity across the globe” according to the United Nations.

Silica sand is mined using open pit, dredging, scooping it up from lakes, riverbeds and shoreline often leaving large holes and destruction behind. Communities close to these operations are expressing fears about the environmental impact, their health and drinking water loss or contamination. Some countries have already banned silica exports.

Pros of using glass:

• recyclable but rarely is due to lack of facilites
• may be less toxic to produce that other packaging 
• beautiful
• No leaching of chemicals into product, no BPA

Cons:

• heavy, leading to more gas consumption and much higher shipping cost
• mined which causes environmental impacts
• non renewable resource
• much more expensive to buy
• breakable

The bottom line: We use a variety of packaging based on availability, what product we are selling, cost addition to the product, how many we have to buy from that factory, storage, does it need to be unbreakable (as in shower and bath products).

There are no good solutions in packaging. So far not one single option is better than another in our eyes. So until a good option becomes available, we will continue to use all option.

For an interesting article, check out: The Narwhal: Manitoba silica sand mining
Just google for more articles and studies on the environmental concerns over silica sand mining.:silica sand mining environmental impact.