Recycling your glass jars and bottles is really common, there are many local recycling bank locations for recycling glass and many councils now provide glass recycling directly to your door via your kerbside collection
Glassware such as drinking glasses, pyrex dishes and measuring jugs are generally not recycleable in your local collection – but may be taken at your local household recycling centre
Plate glass, from things such as windows, mirrors and coffee tables is recycled by a lot of Local Household Recycling Centres
- The energy saved from recycling one bottle will power a 100 watt light bulb for almost an hour
- Each UK family uses an average of 500 glass bottles and jars annually.
- Glass is 100% recyclable and can be used again and again.
- Glass that is thrown away and ends up in landfills will never decompose.
Once taken to the treatment plant, the bottles and jars are placed on a conveyor belt and sorted to remove the metal and plastic caps and collars that dress bottles from the neck up. This is done both manually and by using powerful vacuums to suck up the waste from the belts.
The glass, then goes through machines that use laser, X-ray and digital technology to remove critical contaminants such as ceramic and stone. It can also distinguish between colours and types of glass. As it falls, each fragment is scanned and identified and the information fed into a computer which activates air jets lower down which fire at the specified piece of contamination or glass with pinpoint accuracy, blasting them onto separate conveyor belts. In this way the green, brown and clear glass can be separated out.
Once sorted, it is supplied to bottle and jar manufacturers, who melt it at up to 1600 degrees to make new bottles and jars using up to 90% recycled glass with the rest made up of raw materials including sand, soda ash and limestone.
Animation of the process courtesy of www.wrap.org.uk