The Container Question: Glass, Plastic, or Aluminum?

I went down a rabbit hole today on sparkling water containers...glass versus plastic versus aluminum cans. I hoped to conclude with a little clarity, but I didn't. Most of the research I found was written by someone with a financial stake in the answer, so that's the first thing you have to deal with before you trust any of it.

Some things I'm still thinking about. Nobody wants recycled glass. It costs money to process, which is probably why the nearest place I can drop off glass bottles is 25 miles from my house. Aluminum actually comes back as aluminum. That part seems to work. However, I had not really thought about the plastic liner inside every can until I started digging into the topic today...and the health questions around that liner don't seem to have many good answers yet. The PNAS study from 2024 finding up to 240,000 nanoplastic fragments per liter in plastic bottles, I don't know what to do with that exactly, but it doesn't sound good. Plus I keep coming back to the washing question regarding glass bottles. The argument for washing and reusing glass bottles makes intuitive sense to me, but I don't actually know how much water that takes. Could it be one of those things that sounds good but has more downsides than we realize?

I still have more questions than answers on this one, even though I intutivley lean toward glass. If you want my full lessons and thought, I them together in a little video and slidedeck.