Why Don’t we see More Recycled Glass Products?
Let’s take a look at glass. Or better yet, let’s take a look through glass. What do you see? Technically glass is said to be a “super-cooled fluid” rather than a “true” solid. But that only matters if you are a student of really old windows, when the slow flow of glass under the influence of gravity makes the lower half of an antique window thicker than the upper.
Glass is made from silica, soda ash and limestone. Soda ash is created in vast amounts by the worldwide chemicals industry whereas limestone and silica quarry products. Once all these ingredients are gathered, they are melted together at extremely high temperatures, creating glass. This method for creating glass is used for everything from creating glass fibres used in windows and car windscreens, all the way to bottles and jars you keep in your kitchen.
Vast amounts of energy are used in the production and the pre-production of glass. So using recycled glass to make thing such as recycled glass vases must be a good thing, right?
Up to a certain point. The sad fact is that most glass used in the products and objects we buy is brand new material. The reason for this is that manufacturers tend to insist on uniformity and creating glass like that is only feasibleby creating it from scratch
The absolute best thing you can do with old glass products like bottles and jars is to clean them out and re-use them for the original purpose. 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 reusing glass is so successful in this form is because alongside dropping off fresh milk the milk delivery system also involves picking up old bottles. The biggest reasons why other types of bottle recycling has not worked is mainly down to the lack of cooperation from retailers who don’t want to organise the collection process, and then the cost of returning imported bottles for products such as wine.
Most bottles that are recycled are ground down to form a material called cullet, this can be then used to create new glass. But it isn’t. In fact the glass we recycle is used in lots of other ways, such as inclusion in aggregate mixtures 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 recycled glass isn’t used to make new glass is because of it’s uncertain composition and exact specifications that are required by glass makers, this makes it impossible to recycle.
Plate glass is an even worse problem. 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? They go to landfill. The reason why this happens is because it just takes too much time and costs too much to remove the glass.
It’s actually very difficult to find a retailer that sellers products created from recycled glass. The retailers that are selling recycled products should be encouraged to continue as they are proving to others that this really can be done. So here’s a great link to a retailer that stocks a number of recycled glass products, including recycled glass tableware such as plates, bowls and wine glasses, as well as colourful recycled glass bathroom accessories such as soap dispensers.
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