Being Green When Drinking: What Is The Environmentally Superior Container?

Kermit the frog was right: it isn’t easy being green—or in our case, trying to be. Everyone who is paying attention realizes that we face many environmental problems but it can be difficult to discern what an individual consumer can do to address them.

For example, although we now know that the ubiquity of plastic pollution is harming scores of species—including our own—the usefulness of plastic makes it difficult to replace. For instance, if we want to avoid plastic when we buy packaged water the only alternative in most places is glass. However, glass bottles cost much more to produce and, owing to their greater weight, cost more to transport and increase CO2 emissions. 

In response, some beverage companies have begun selling water in aluminum cans and cardboard containers, which are cost competitive with plastic and environmentally friendlier as well. This is in part because plastic comes from petroleum or natural gas, most of it is never recycled, and it is not currently biodegradable. Instead, it ends up in landfills or else in nature, where it breaks down into tiny particles that pollute ecosystems, food chains and our bodies.

If cardboard and aluminum are more eco-friendly than plastic, which of these would be the better option? A company cleverly called Boxed Water Is Better has been widely advertising the environmental bona fides for its container. However, the company’s conclusion that boxed water is the best choice for the environment is not clear-cut. 

To make this assessment requires the consideration of many variables, including the pollution generated, the energy needed and emissions released when producing and transporting the container; the water resources required for the production and recycling of the containers; and the extent to which the containers are (or might be) recycled. This last variable, in turn, directly depends on the potential profits from recycling the container thus to the incentives both individuals and companies have to participate in recycling it.

How do these alternatives to plastic compare?

The relative recycling rates are revealing: In the US, one half of all aluminum cans, 29 percent of plastic containers, and only 16 percent of cartons get recycled. 

Aluminum is recycled at much higher rates because it generates dramatically more revenue than the alternatives: It is 45 times more valuable per ton than cartons. Without the revenue from used beverage cans, most material recovery facilities that separate single stream recyclables and are vital to the U.S. recycling system would not be able to operate.

A typical, shelf-stable carton contains three different materials and is 74 percent paper, 22 percent plastic, and 4 percent aluminum. This makes it more difficult and costly to recycle than plastic and aluminum because the metal and plastic have to be stripped out. Moreover, once separated the materials generate relatively little money, so cartons tend to be revenue losers for municipal waste companies. 

This helps to explain why in Vietnam, for example, where eight billion cartons were sold last year but rarely recycled, the detritus litters its beaches.

By contrast, nearly three-fourths of an aluminum can is made of recycled material and the entire beverage can is made of aluminum. Unlike plastic, aluminum can be recycled forever since it retains its strength as it goes through the recycling process multiple times. Aluminum also requires less energy to transport because it is lighter and can be packed tighter than the alternatives.

The relatively high value of cans also increases recycling rates because scrap merchants have a greater financial incentive to collect aluminum. Such dynamics suggest that a shift toward aluminum beverage containers could reduce the trend of waste companies abandoning recycling altogether. So could public policies that incentivize recycling by placing a deposit on containers, which is refunded when the containers are returned and have proven successful across the globe.

In today’s society the path to becoming green is often confusing and complicated. But it is also the case that by analyzing the relevant variables we can find our way toward better environmental practices. What has become clear is that choosing to have a beverage in a plastic container is a poor choice, that a box made of paper, plastic and metal is not obviously better, and that an aluminium can is likely the best choice. 

Bron Taylor, who co-authored this piece, is Professor of Environmental Studies & Ethics at the University of Florida