Glass bottles are often touted as the environmental alternative to plastic, but they are not. Glass is an energy-intensive product to make. More fossil fuels are required to make a glass bottle than a plastic bottle or aluminum can. Those fossil fuels release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Glass is also much heavier than plastic, leading to more carbon emissions during transportation. That is one reason many beverage companies have actually transitioned to recycled PET plastic rather than glass. 

Glass is recyclable, but some municipal recycling programs don’t accept the material because small bits of broken glass cause problems for the sorting machines and it is too sharp for employees to sift through safely. 

This post is part of a weekly series on environmental myths. You can find more myths here.