I’m not sure how it would even make sense to have globally centralised bottling.
Luckily Wikipedia keeps a page on this, and I see there are almost twenty bottling plants in the US alone. Another industry blogger breathlessly reports that coke has 900+ bottling and syrup plants across the globe.
To your point I’m sure some glass bottles get shipped internationally, but it doesn’t appear to be their M.O. They keep a few syrup plants across the globe and many bottling plants and distribution partners who work more locally, so the weight of their shipping media for the beverage is likely to be fairly well optimised.
Switching to glass across the globe would be a task for local bottlers and distributors, and although it might pose some challenges it’d be worth it imo
As far as I understand it comes down to recycling rates: In countries like Germany where there’s mandatory deposit on one-use plastic bottles it’s a definitive win, in other places the situation isn’t as clear-cut. PET bottles can be recycled very well provided you have a clean recycling stream, which the deposit ensures.
Still, beer in plastic bottles is a travesty, it’s generally deposit glass bottles over here (some brewery-specific, many many many generic though the crates tend to be specific). Cans at least won’t spoil the beer, but are also more annoying deposit-wise as you have to take care to not crush them in the wrong way or the machine won’t be able to read the code.
Side note: Apparently our whole traditional glass recycling is cooked, too much stuff that shouldn’t be in there in there that spoils whole batches. And very difficult to educate people about it or filter things out automatically, sure, ceramics can be filtered out, but drinking glasses of the wrong type of glass messing up the whole chemistry? Forget it. The good news is that crushed glass makes excellent aggregate, I’ve even heard of some places using it to top up beaches.
I’m not sure how it would even make sense to have globally centralised bottling.
Luckily Wikipedia keeps a page on this, and I see there are almost twenty bottling plants in the US alone. Another industry blogger breathlessly reports that coke has 900+ bottling and syrup plants across the globe.
To your point I’m sure some glass bottles get shipped internationally, but it doesn’t appear to be their M.O. They keep a few syrup plants across the globe and many bottling plants and distribution partners who work more locally, so the weight of their shipping media for the beverage is likely to be fairly well optimised.
Switching to glass across the globe would be a task for local bottlers and distributors, and although it might pose some challenges it’d be worth it imo
Removed by mod
As far as I understand it comes down to recycling rates: In countries like Germany where there’s mandatory deposit on one-use plastic bottles it’s a definitive win, in other places the situation isn’t as clear-cut. PET bottles can be recycled very well provided you have a clean recycling stream, which the deposit ensures.
Still, beer in plastic bottles is a travesty, it’s generally deposit glass bottles over here (some brewery-specific, many many many generic though the crates tend to be specific). Cans at least won’t spoil the beer, but are also more annoying deposit-wise as you have to take care to not crush them in the wrong way or the machine won’t be able to read the code.
Side note: Apparently our whole traditional glass recycling is cooked, too much stuff that shouldn’t be in there in there that spoils whole batches. And very difficult to educate people about it or filter things out automatically, sure, ceramics can be filtered out, but drinking glasses of the wrong type of glass messing up the whole chemistry? Forget it. The good news is that crushed glass makes excellent aggregate, I’ve even heard of some places using it to top up beaches.