W.L. Rathje

By W.L. Rathje

When I founded the Garbage Project in 1973, the main goal was to track changes in our society over the long haul: Where better to look for these changes than in garbage, that common denominator of life in America? And what could be more common in American life than soda and beer?

When I counted the soda and beer containers that student sorters recorded in the garbage from households in Tucson, AZ, the results were to be expected: Aluminum cans had largely replaced steel cans, glass bottles had risen somewhat for beer and fallen for soda, especially in larger sizes; and two-liter polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic bottles had become the major workhorse to heft soft drinks. Further evaluation, however, suggests that there are some surprises in the way a few mundane basics of life have changed in the past three decades.

The First Surprise

From 1979 to 1989, aluminum soda cans generally increased in refuse as the number of soft-drink brands using aluminum increased. During the same period, aluminum beer cans decreased in refuse, even though sales of beer in aluminum cans remained strong. What's more, in pre-curbside-recycling days, while aluminum cans in general were dropping rapidly out of refuse and into recycling centers, the drop was twice as steep for beer cans as for soda cans. (The recycling of aluminum cans was identified by finding pull-tabs and no cans in refuse; whether the recycled cans had contained soda or beer was determined by the color and shape of each pull-tab. See my column in the November/December 2000 issue of MSW Management.)

This pattern suggests that people who drink beer at home might be more ardent recyclers than those who imbibe mainly soda there. Beer is more expensive than soda; perhaps the beer cans pile up fast enough among heavy consumers to become an important supplement to pay for their brews.

The Second Surprise

When the total ounces of beer and soda delivered by all of the various containers was tracked over time, the result was startling. Household beer-container disposal has fallen from an amount representing 40 oz. of average beer use per biweekly refuse pickup in the mid-1970s to about 20 oz. per pickup in the early 1990s. (Note that the real drop in home beer consumption is not anywhere near as precipitous , because beer cans are being taken to recycling centers.)

In the same period, household disposal of soda containers has skyrocketed, from containers representing just more than 20 oz. of average soda use per refuse pickup in the late 1970s to more than 50 oz. per twice-a-week refuse pickup by the late 1980s. (Indeed Beverage Industry magazine reports that soda consumption went from 30.3 gal. per capita in 1972 to 48 gal. per capita in 1992.) And of course that trend has continued as some of us - probably a lot of us - are guzzling a good deal more soda than we used to.

How to explain this seismic shift in soda-guzzling at home? Megabucks spent on advertising by Coke and Pepsi? Beer companies too are hardly advertising slouches. Lessening alcohol consumption due to rising health consciousness? Soda isn't exactly health food. For me, there is only one convincing explanation: the two-liter PET bottle.

Lightweight plastic PET makes it much easier to bring large quantities of soda home from the store. The two-liter PET bottle delivers a whopping 67.6 oz. of soda - more than double the cargo of its nearest glass or metal competitor, and the PET container by itself today weighs less than 2 oz. To bring home the same load of soda in glass, you would be lugging around 14 oz. of glass.

For shoppers who transported soda home over the last two-plus decades, the choice between glass and PET was made quickly.

From the date of its first introduction in the late 1970s, the quantity of soda that Tucson shoppers carried home in PET rose exponentially, blowing past soda in glass and aluminum in just three years. Over the past decade, the soda brought home in PET has leveled off at more than 40 oz. per refuse pickup - double the total held by all of the beer containers found in garbage.

If PET has been such a boon to soda, why isn't beer bottled in PET? Would it not taste as good? That's what was said when beer first was put in cans. In fact, beer now is bottled in plastic in Europe and Australia where people are very particular about their beer.

But there is a legitimate reason for an incompatibility between PET and beer sold in America. A soda container's most important job (apart from carrying the liquid) is keeping the carbon dioxide carbonation inside. A beer container's job is keeping beer-souring oxygen out. PET holds in soda fizz well enough. But, in America, due to the megalogistics of national distribution from a few large breweries, there is an average of five to eight weeks between bottling and consumption of beer. PET doesn't keep oxygen out well enough for that long. Packaged in PET, beer bottlers sadly note, the flavor of the brew deteriorates. (Beer is bottled in plastic in Europe and Australia by breweries that distribute their brews rapidly to nearby consumers).

Of course it is no wonder that Coke and Pepsi have been supporters of PET recycling. (The Food and Drug Administration has issued a "letter of no objection" to Coke and Pepsi, tacitly approving their processes for recycling old PET bottles into new ones.) Due also in large part to container deposit laws, more than 40% of all plastic soda bottles were recycled during the 1990s.

When I think like an archaeologist, 20 years is nothing - hardly the blink of an eye. But that's all it took for the introduction of PET to dramatically affect our consumption. Now why do you think all of those people are carrying bottled water in highly lightweight plastics? For health reasons, sure; but it is more than for health reasons alone.

Would the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow be lugging heavy and cumbersome glass water bottles? Too bad I didn't write this column 10 years ago when I could have foreseen the coming wave of water in lightweight plastic bottles and invested in it!

Archeologist and Contributing Editor W.L. Rathje is founder and director of the Garbage Project.

MSW - May/June 2004