This article, by Lucy Siegle, reporter, asks the question "Are plastic jars worse for the environment?" She notes that, "Several grocery products I used to buy in glass jars are now in plastic. Is this ethically better or worse?" The average household buys 4,000 packaged products a year, including food. If each of those products comes in a single-use, poorly packaged receptacle – a mix of copolymers which can't easily be recycled – then that's 4,000 bits of extra pollution. Packaging has a lot of jobs: avoiding waste, guaranteeing that products are tamper free, marketing and making sure it's "shelf-ready" for all-powerful supermarkets. After comparing glass packaging with PET, Lucy concludes: "I urge you to remain a glass purist. While it's hard to stem the rising tide of plastic packaging, plastic waste – from bottles to the tiny beads called mermaid's tears – is wreaking havoc on oceans especially. Nothing against PET, the most widely used and recycled plastic… but glass wins for me."
