glass bottle will take 1 million years to biodegrade

[tali1]

a glass bottle will take 1 million years to biodegrade- how did they caluclate that?- and what if a glass bottle is totally crushed into smithereens?- does that solve its infinite biodegrade times?(or is crushing/pulping of a object irrelevant to its biodegradeability times?)

[gen2]

Crushing and pulping really only reduces particle size to a point where they are almost invisible to the eye. "Out of sight - Out of mind"

However, the small particles still have the same composition as the original object, they still occupy the same space/volume as the original and have not biodegraded at all.

Crushing does have one advantage in that it does spped up the biodegradation somewhat by exposing a larger surface area to whatever agent it is that degrades it (microbes or chemical action). In the case of glass, it is chemical action that degrades it and since glass is a very stable compound, the time required will still be extremely long even if speeded up. Does it really make much difference if the glass in your local landfill site degrades in 1 million years or a quarter of a million years? It is still one **** of a long time.

[New Judge]

And does it make any difference if it never decays at all?

After all glass is only sand, and (at least for the moment) I don't hear anybody suggesting that sand is causing any problems.

[Bewlay Bros]

http://www.theanswerbank.co.uk/News/Question47 6594.html

The above question may be of interest to you.

With all respect, I can not understand why people fail to see the damage glass is causing.

Yes, glass is sand and will produce no carbon emissions on its own. But..............and its a big but, look atthe wider picture.

Sand blasting to make glass causes huge heat losses and fuel consumptions. And in turn as glass is heavy, the transport emissions caused by such are ridiculously high.

In turn the recylabilty of glass uses 80+ percent less energy than starting from anew.

Also, the fact many bottles are not smashed when placed in land fill sites, they cause vacuums in the earth and take up lots of space. This in turn further lenghtens natural biodegradabilty of biodegradable waste (i.e paper, food etc)

I know this does not answer your question, but people really must see the wider picture. And for the sake pf placing a glass bottle (or plastic, paper, etc) in a seperate bin is really no great effort considerring the planet is at stake.

[heathfield]

I'm curious to know what glass bio-degrades into. Much volcanic glass (obsidian) has been hanging around for many millions of years, and as far as I know, it hasn't degraded at all.
Glass is pretty inert stuff, resisting acids and alkalines. In a crushed state, it is no more harmful to the environment than the quartz particles found in sand.