Most wax paper and kraft paper is made using PFAS, and has for a very long time, as ‘forever wax’ is the most durable, tasteless, and chemically inert.
Most plastic is not safe to reuse for the same uses, as the plastic is a little porous and is nearly impossible to properly clean to a sanitary level once exposed to certain types of chemicals or other contaminants. And it is exceptionally difficult and expensive to effectively test for them.
Think of the stains Tupperware would get if you left something with tomato sauce in it too long.
Now think of the equivalent of ‘community Tupperware’ - except someone stored pesticide in one of them before turning it in.
I am going to revise my joy of waxed paper. I thought it was carnuba and soy. However PFOA free paper is a thing now, I have hope for the future.
For plastics, reuse has limits, sure. My dad's tool room was packed full of pipe tobacco tins, for screws, bolts, thread-cutting die. I think when we banned smoking we did two harms: we allowed people to grow old and become a burden on the state instead of dying young, and we stopped providing almost limitless tins for things to be put in.
Glass is god level re-use. Second time round is a bare minimum for many economies use of glass, but the steps down the chain from clear through coloured to aggregates for construction are still an amazing chain. Hopefully with improved renewable energy the whole heat-cost to re-form glass (and aluminium and steel) can be worked through.
Glass is often dirt cheap to make, and recycling it usually only makes sense if you can match colors and compositions - as if you can’t, the coefficients of expansion will be different and colors weird, making it difficult to make sellable or high quality product with it.
Reusing containers commercially is also usually impossible with the way the consumer market is now structured, as there isn’t any single dominant player, standardized container, etc. in any one market.
At the consumer level though, it’s usually a lot easier - pasta jars are free to reuse for whatever, etc.
This was commercial milk delivery across a country, several millions of people.
"Proper rinsing" is not adequate for commercial operations. High temperature (near boiling) water at fairly high pressure, tens of thousands of bottles in a batch. Metal baskets, mechanical conveyors. I'll let you imagine the failure modes.
I lol'ed at the thought of milk bottles being rinsed by hand in a commercial operation. How much do you want your milk to cost?
Turned upside down on a conveyor, and having the insides and outsides blasted by high pressure caustic solution is rinsing properly. And exactly what I was referring to.
Glass shards aren’t going to be able to stay inside or on any bottle subjected to that.
But if a neighbor shattered at some point when later filled, it could happen I guess.
Though that would apply to anything bottled in glass, new or old glass yeah?
[https://cen.acs.org/materials/coatings/PFAS-paper-food-packa...]
Most plastic is not safe to reuse for the same uses, as the plastic is a little porous and is nearly impossible to properly clean to a sanitary level once exposed to certain types of chemicals or other contaminants. And it is exceptionally difficult and expensive to effectively test for them.
Think of the stains Tupperware would get if you left something with tomato sauce in it too long.
Now think of the equivalent of ‘community Tupperware’ - except someone stored pesticide in one of them before turning it in.
Glass generally doesn’t have this issue.