The Magic Of Glass

Coca Cola rents this old church for storage in Pidigan, Philippines.

   

There is nothing better than a Coca-Cola from a glass bottle. I am old enough to remember when you could still buy it in a machine, drink it, and return the bottle for a deposit. Not only did it taste better, but it was better for the environment and as we are learning, our health. The deposit was an economic incentive to recycle the bottle instead of throwing it away and kept this vast source of waste out of landfills. We were sold a lie about plastic recycling by industry that has proven to be bad for the environment and our health. We need to bring back glass along with the bottle bills that compelled companies to take back their waste. It was a system that worked.

When we stopped to visit a friend of my wife's, a Catholic priest, at the church in Pidigan, we explored the old, earthquake-damaged church next to the newer one. The old Spanish brick is barely holding it up, and it seems like it could fall at any time, though it still stands after the 2022 7.0 earthquake that hit the region. In the U.S., authorities might say it was unsafe, but in the Philippines, unsafe is a relative term.

The church rents the old building out to Coca-Cola, which uses it for storage. Almost everything in the facility is glass. I asked the manager how many times they could refill the glass bottles. He said it was about six times before they had to be replaced. To my chagrin, he told me there were moves to replace glass with plastic because it was expensive for people to pay the deposit fee. The Philippines already suffers from a plastic pollution problem, and the deposit isn't a charge. The U.S. industry made a similar argument when removing deposit programs. Unlike plastic, which, even if it is recyclable, degrades, glass can endlessly be made into new glass. In the Philippines, where far less becomes waste and far more is repurposed than in the profligate United States, glass becomes another economic activity and not waste.

In the Philippines, glass is the dominant packaging in which one buys soda or beer. While most glass bottles are recycled, you can buy things like homemade vinegar in large glass Coke bottles. Sometimes gas is also sold that way, so I always wonder if those ever find their way back to be cleaned and refilled with soda. Another argument favoring glass in a hot, humid country is that it is preferable for unrefrigerated things, and most things are unrefrigerated. As we learn more about how unhealthy plastic is when heated or used for long-term food storage, glass becomes an even better option. Once again, we can renew the future by looking to the past.