Glass Recycling
Glass is a pretty amazing material. Humans have been using glass for thousands of years, the first examples date back as early as 12,000 BC with the Ancient Egyptians, and it’s really no surprise. Glass can be used for all sorts, from the obvious like bottles and windows, and even in things like jewellery and to build roads. However because we use so much of it there is generally a large amount of it wasted. The ease of glass recycling should counter that.
On average a family from the UK uses about 330 glass bottles every year, in 2011 the total waste for glass was over 2.7 million tonnes and what’s even more scary is that it takes 1,000,000 years for it to fully degrade in a landfill; no wonder that Egyptian jewellery was still around after all that time. However these statistics become less intimidating when we realise that glass is actually 100% recyclable, it can be recycled endlessly with no loss in its quality or purity. So no matter how many times that bottle becomes another bottle, or something else, it’ll still be as good as it always was.
Because of how well it can be recycled, this also aids in cutting down on the energy and materials needed to make new glass bottles. By recycling just one bottle you save enough energy to power a lightbulb for up to an hour and, for every tonne, that’s 42kWh of electricity saved. Recycled glass also can be substituted for up to 95% of the materials used to make a new one. Furthermore, glass recycling uses only 30% the amount of energy it would need to produce the same product from raw materials, it saves 315kg of CO2 per tonne and by performing glass recycling, businesses can extend the life of their equipment, such as furnaces and other machinery.
Aside from all these benefits, it’s important for UK businesses to recycle glass as usually it is the most heavy and bulky of all waste and can be quite a hassle to deal with when disposing of, and often ineffective in terms of cost. Finally, glass recycling is also key in helping to contribute towards greater resource efficiency in the UK by preventing energy used on sending waste glass landfill.
So, why recycle glass? Well, why not?