Glass over Plastic: The Choice is Not as Difficult as You Think

Glass is amazing…even though you might be like “oh well it’s heavy, breakable and stuff”…etc.

Well at least it forces you to be careful and pay attention. Yes, you…lazy person, too lazy to use a reusable container, listen, it takes sacrifice and effort to change bad habits. (Not saying I am perfect, far from it…but I try to improve) And yes, we’ve got to start somewhere. One of the things that really annoyed me the most when I moved to the U.S is how extreme and super fast the process of “buying-dispensing” was here. Almost every single purchase comes with something to through away in the first 10 first minutes. You buy a coffee, a snack or anything else, you get unlimited plastic bags, containers, wrappers, napkins etc and it fills up these trash-canes in no time.

Big shout-out to the garbage men in New York City, I barely see them, but I know that they work hard!!!

Everyone wants to come back to nature, right? It’s like the current trend lately… well here you go, let’s first start with a reminder.

Glass is

-100% recyclable

reusable (yay)

-Transparent! 😛

According to a researched, “glass has the purity of structure that makes any interaction with the stored liquid impossible. Plastic on the other hand is known to alter the properties of certain beverages because of the chemical reactions that appear in time between the artificial structure and the possible acids in the beverage.” (Even water)

That same researcher said that “glass bottles do not affect the structure of the environment by their chemical composition, their only problem comes from the fact that they remain in the same form for millions of years, there will actually be no change in their structure”.

It is a stable material, but at least we can recycle it in many noble things.

Glass comes from nature and even if you drop your glass container in the ocean, it will transform into a nice piece of “landart”↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓

Ocean Glass
Ocean glass*

If you have mason jars at home, give this little thingy a try (The Cuppow)! I have one, and I use it everyday on my glass jar. Anyway it taste better to drink tea from a glass container when you don’t have nice tea-cups with you. (I do have a nice and super cute portable Gongfu Tea Set but…not always carrying it with me)

Portable Kit
My Portable Gongfu Cha Kit
Drink from a jar!
Cuppow is made in the USA!

Anyway, let’s get back to the topic. Glass is really a great material. You can really get creative too, you choose your own container, it’s cheap, and it’s getting cool again. When I used to be in art school, I worked with this material, so I always loved it very much. My two fav were wood and glass. I am glad that I got to work with both of them. They are so esthetic, that’s how it is when it’s a classic. It never gets old.

So if you transformed your mason jar into a cup, you might need a jar sleeve to absorbe the heet. Either you make your own or you can find one on etsy.

Cute Mason Tea Cup
That’s how I drink my tea at work.

Anyway, it doesn’t matter if you drink tea or not, consider ditching the plastic habit and drinking out of something reusable, even paper cups. I tried stainless steel but not a fan of the taste. I don’t know about you, but I am very sensitive when it comes to the taste of the water, especially from weird man-made containers, it’s even more a problem when it comes to tea. If you want to read more about water and tea, check out my previous post about how to purify water.

If you’re still not convinced, they are still great containers with Glass inside and plastic outside. So a little more practical for our modern city life. Here my post about my wonder-super-duper crush tea tumbler.

Now Germany and France produces more and more glass containers, hope that the U.S will follow in that great trend. FYI the French company Saint Gobain, is ranked 2nd in the world for glass bottles and jars hehe.

*(Found that pic here)

2 Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *