Pom, no longer wonderful.

I love Pom, producers of fine pomegranate juice products. They're yummy. Unfortunately, recently I've had to limit my consumption of Pom to their juice/tea blends due to the packaging. You see, I've become aware of the growing island of plastic in our ocean, and have decided to try to limit the amount of plastic packaging in my life starting with the easiest, beverage containers. I've limited myself to glass, aluminium or paper containers. Yeah, it's not much, but as a harm reductionist, doing something is always better than nothing.

Anyway, now Pom has decided to change their juice/tea containers from these awesome, and endlessly reusable, glass bottles...

With their wide mouth and actually functioning lids, they were pretty much perfect for a variety of storage tasks beyond refilling with liquid. I've started plant cuttings in them, I keep one in my car to refill with water, I've used them to store tacks, screws, nails and other small things, and would use them to store nuts, grains, seeds and other similar food products.

As they excitedly announced on their website, "Glass dismissed", and touted the benefits of plastic (which NEVER biodegrades) as being:
Recyclable - though did you know that more than 3/4ths of plastic is never recycled?
Less energy to produce - though it's still made from petroleum (it's more than gas folks)
Less energy to transport - I don't know how they figure this. They've increased the size of the product, meaning it weighs about the same as the smaller, reusable, glass bottle.

On top of that, they've devolved to the traditional, and practically useless, small mouth bottle design. This means that they're pretty much only good for liquid storage, unless you cut the top off, but then you lose the resealable aspect that made the glass bottles so useful. One can only reuse so many plastic beverage bottles as water containers before they have to start throwing them out. Reuse is always more ecologically friendly than recycling because you don't need to spend the energy to transport the stuff to the recycling center, or to break it down and recreate it into a new product.

Anyway, I've written them a letter expressing my dismay at their foolish choice. If you agree, feel free to write them as well. customerservice@pomwonderful.com