The alternatives are glass, metal, and paper...all of which require more fossil fuels to make than plastics, plus the additional weight.
We need to cut down the rain forests and use the wood to make trays, cups, dishes and other essential items needed on ships.
“The alternatives are glass, metal, and paper...all of which require more fossil fuels to make than plastics, plus the additional weight.”
Actually making new glass from ground up glass takes less energy than brand new glass. And as far as ability to re-sterilize a container, glass is far superior to any plastic, as most plastics cannot be heated to the temps needed for most sterilization processes - which is why all the plastic pill bottles are useless as far as being reused for pills again.
Yes glass weighs more. But where its as a container is limited by distance - as it used to be with the local dairy - its infinite ability to be reused, again and again, for the same purpose may be less of a total-energy expense than plastics. You have the extra transportation-fuel expense and the sterilization energy expense minus what would otherwise be the cost of buying new bottles all the time.
But throwing away glass makes it a non-biodegraded material in a landfill longer than just about anything else - 1 million years. If there is anything that ought to be reused or recycled (ground up and made into new glass) it is glass.