I want to discuss our year-round return & reuse program. You guys buy our jars knowing that it really does matter where the sauce inside them is from and how it is made. But how much do you know about the bottles themselves?

Did you know that 27.5 billion glass bottles are manufactured in the United States every year — 80% of which are made specifically for beverages, like wine. The other 20%? For jarred foods, like sauce!

Here’s the process to manufacturing glass bottles that’s never discussed: Producing glass bottles uses finite resources, but also a massive amount of energy. Sand has to be heated to around 2,000 degrees F to be melted into glass. And at glassmaking plants, machines run all day, every day, making for a carbon footprint that’s likely considered unsustainable for the environment.

Here’s the dirty secret to recycling that’s never discussed: When a bottle of glass is manufactured, it goes from the factory to the producer. The producer fills it with liquid and sends it all over the world, and then it’s bought by a user who consumes it. Then 70% of this glass gets recycled (the other 30% gets trashed). This 70% that will get recycled has to travel back to a factory, where it will be melted again. The transportation process alone requires a significant amount of energy and produces significant carbon emissions.

Here’s our open secret to reusing that we always communicate: Glass jars (like ours) that can be returned, get sanitized and get reused by getting refilled countless times. That’s it! Simple!

Recycling is slowly, but surely, becoming a dirty word that no one will want to say anymore because it’s not as sustainable as once thought.

Reuse is the best way at this point and some of the bigger brands have a much bigger problem to solve because the future demands sustainability as well as cleaner and innovative solutions. All this said, I’m not going to package my sauces in-a-box but I’m not entirely opposed to bottling them inside a plant-based container either. I’m researching packaging constantly and I can honestly say that the future of jarring sauce is looking cleaner and far more sustainable. We’ll see what lies ahead.

For now, help combat climate change by returning your jars and get a discount to boot!