Glass or Plastic?

6/24/2014

For many years, food other than those coming from a can, came from glass bottles and jars.  And I liked that. Glass jars were/are easy to reuse.  Unlike it's counterpart, the plastic jar, you could wash out a glass jar with very little effort.  I cannot say the same for plastic jars.

Years ago, we used to keep peanut butter (in glass jars) in a cupboard well within a little boy's reach (first mistake).  One of the boys picked up the full glass jar of peanut butter and it fell onto the floor.  Clean up couldn't have been easier, the broken glass adhered to the peanut butter.  All I had to do was pick up the jar by it's lid and toss.  Very few remanents were left behind for me to pick up..  

Plastic jars can crack, but they don't break. And, they can be repurposed, but somehow getting the last of the "innards" out of the jar requires determination.  I buy peanut butter in plastic jars, simply because that's all I can find.  When the jar is empty, I want to be able to use it to store something else.  Peanut butter being what I'm most familiar with, is particularly difficult to get out of a jar.  I add boiling water to the jar and let it sit, rinse and repeat.  Some would say that this is a significant waste of my time, but I'm retired so what else am I going to do?

In today's paper is an article about glass versus plastic and some of the facts surprised me.  Those that are in the "know" (whoever they are) seem to think that a glass jar offers no health or environmental benefit over plastic.  A small peanut butter manufacturer in Vermont sells it's peanut butter in plastic jars, because glass is almost one pound heavier than plastic, which drives up shipping costs.

A comparison of baby food, glass v. plastic, found that glass jars produce between a quarter and a third more greenhouse gases than plastic.  Plastic drink containers also are superior to glass.  Glass bottles of soda produce four times as much greenhouse gas as plastic. 

In plastic products, the leaching of antimony (possible carcinogen) into the container.  Under normal conditions, this occurs so slowly that there's no need to worry.  In high temperatures leaching accelerates.  If you store a bottle of water at 185 degrees, the water will become contaminated in 32 hours.  I don't know about you, but there is no way that I would be able to tolerate a temperature that high, nor would I want to drink not warm water, but hot water!

Long story short - plastic is a fine medium for food and drinks.

P