Recycled PET can be put to a wide variety of uses, including containers, carpets, and “polar fleece” fabric. And honestly I don’t think you need to be afraid of walking on carpet barefoot or wearing fleece.

As you said, glass, like plastic, can be recycled, but it presents many more challenges. To recycle glass most effectively, it needs to be sorted by color. However, in single-stream curbside recycling (the most common mode of consumer recycling), the different colors are commingled, lowering the value of the materials and making them more difficult to recycle. Mixed glass materials, if recycled, are ultimately crushed into small pieces and utilized for road paint’s reflective properties, ground back into sand for sand blasting materials, or made into fiberglass.

And contrary to myth, glass isn’t biodegradable and isn’t going to otherwise disappear into the ether, as demonstrated by the glass artifacts from ancient civilizations on display in museums around the world.

Finally, keep in mind manufacturing glass requires more energy – sand doesn’t like to be turned into glass without a fight! Liter for liter, PET bottles require 24% less energy to produce, generate 40% less solid waste, and emit 46% less carbon during shipping than glass bottles.

Good ideas for green may not be good ideas for health. I wish Fiji water came in a glass bottle, rather than a plastic one. I know it is not considered as green, but plastic is forever and is clogging a large area of the currents in the North Pacific. (Yes, plastic is often disposed of improperly,to the dismay of fish and other sea life. You can sell it, but you can’t controll where it goes after that.) I do not think it is healthy to eat or drink from plastic. I seek out glass, ceramic, even unscratched stainless steel containers which I gladly reuse.

I do recall the days when we returned our glass bottles to the store for a refund knowing they would go back to the manufacturer for reuse. How’s that for green? Even children would collect them and take them back for the refund money. How’s that for incentive?

Forward is sometimes not the opposite of backward. Using gasoline to make plastics instead of sending it to the gas pumps means we will use up the oil on this planet that much sooner. Claiming that plastic is good because it can be recycled does not mean that it will be recycled. (Certainly I try to stay away from recycled plastic products because of health concerns.)

When I was a child I went to the beach and I found the bottom part of an old Coca-Cola bottle in the sand. I thought it would be sharp and cut me when I picked it up, but it had been ground smooth by the action of the water and sand washing over it. Which leads me to the next statement. Glass can be recycled. Glass is not forever even if it is not recycled. It will eventually break down and rejoin the harmless part of the environment.

I truly believe that plastic is not a good thing. (So do my friends the birds, the turtles and the fish.)