I've seen articles lately about the sand becoming harder (more expensive) to get. Even though it is abundant, it is not necessarily clean. It still needs to be refined similar to other raw ores. If the glass has already been made, I would expect the contaminants are easier to eliminate from crushing and melting it back down.
Talking out of my ass, but I think that's only for concrete right? Same reason saudi arabia imports sand for their construction projects.
Not sure. I've never really read the articles. The headlines tend to be from sites that lean a little further that I'm willing to read normally. Search assist AI suggested it was even for glass bottles, but I don't trust anything an AI suggests as it could be sourcing from the same places.
If you're just reading headlines (from any news source), then you're likely misinforming yourself. Headlines are advertisements, not summaries of the articles, and are frequently misleading. At the very least, keep in mind that the headlines are not written by the article's author(s), they're written by editors whose only goal is to get you to read the article.
Yes, and looking at the source of the headline tells me a lot about the type of editors they do or do not have which does not change my original statement that I don't bother reading certain sites. Sure, I said their leaning, but that's not the only thing that is used. But that wasn't really germane to the conversation, but now you've changed the topic.