Glass Bottle

Glass Doesn’t get Recycled Because it Costs too Much

Let’s take a harder look at glass. Or better yet, let’s take a look through glass. What do you see? Technically, glass is not a solid, it’s a “super-cooled fluid”. However, to the average joe, this doesn’t make a blind bit of difference, it only really matters to students of old windows who need to know that due to the slow flow of glass under the full of gravity makes an old window thicker at the bottom.

The mix for making glass is soda ash, limestone and silica. Silica and limestone are quarry products whereas soda ash is produced in large volumes by the worldwide chemicals industry. All the ingredients are melted together at very high temperatures to produce the endless varieties of glass we use today. These range from glass fibres used in insulation via plate glass used in windows and car windscreens, to container glass used in bottles and jars.

Vast amounts of energy are used in the production and the pre-production of glass. So recycling glass into things like recycled glass vases must be a good thing, right?

Up to a point. Unfortunately, most glass we buy in products is actually brand new and rarely recycled. The reason for this is that manufacturers tend to insist on uniformity and creating glass like that is only feasibleby creating it from scratch

One of the best ways to re-use glass is to empty out and clean commonly used glass products, such as bottles, and use them again for their original contents. In the UK, this only takes place with milk bottles which are delivered to houses. These bottles are clean and refilled around 12 times per bottle. The reason why this form of reuse is so successful is because not only do milk bottles get dropped off, but the old ones are also collected. The reason why this form of bottle re-use doesn’t work with other products include the lack of cooperation from retails that don’t want to handle the returns process, the cost of returning bottles back to their country of origin.

All other glass products are ground down to form cullet which can be used in the production of new glass. But it isn’t. The glass that we do recycle ends up being used in other products such as aggregate mixtures which are used in road surfaces. Almost all of the bottles and jars that we recycle have been created from new glass. Your recycling efforts won’t change that. The reason is that the costs of transporting cullet, its uncertain composition, and the precise specifications needed in the glass bottle industry make it impossible.

Recycling plate glass is even worse. A huge amount of glass is used for replacing old glass for things like double glazing units and windscreens. Have you ever wondered what happens to your old window units? Straight into landfill sites. The biggest reason for this is because it simply takes too much time and too much money to remove the glass from the unit.

It is a real challenge to find a shop that sells products created from used glass. The ones that do sell them should be encouraged as they are proving that this really can be done. So here’s a link to a UK retail supplier with many recycled glass products on their range, including recycled glass tableware such as plates, bowls and wine glasses, as well as colourful recycled glass bathroom accessories such as soap dispensers.

I Ain’t Got Time Anymore-The Glass Bottle