Glass recycling is crucial for both financial and environmental reasons. When compared to other recyclable materials, recycled cullet (crushed glass) use a substantial amount less energy. Recycling just one glass bottle results in energy savings equivalent to 90 minutes of watching television. But exactly are the real benefits of recycling glass?
Since the boom in popularity of recycling, many different materials used in consumer products have been found useful to recycle. Plastics, cardboard, and food can all be recycled by expert recycling companies like Great Western Recycling. However, one material that is unique amongst those that can be recycled is glass.
This is because glass, like your everyday milk bottle, is infinitely recyclable. A used glass bottle can be turned into more glass bottles again and again because it can be melted down without degrading its intensity. And even better: the cost doesn’t have to be extortionate.
In this guide, we will cover how glass recycling works, as well as the benefits of recycling this amazing material.
How Recycling Glass Works
The glass recycling process begins residentially like any other: with roadside, kerbside, and home collections of recyclable waste alongside individual contributions at recycling points like bottle banks. Glass collections for businesses start with sorting, storing, and removing their waste according to government regulations enforcing corporate responsibility. Many businesses choose to rely on registered waste disposal services such as Great Western Recycling to ensure conformity with the law.
Ordinarily, glass recycling follows a standard procedure like the one given below. The steps can interchange depending on where the glass is being treated and the type/colour. For more information, see our FAQs on glass recycling.
- Glass is collected and taken to a treatment plant
- It is sorted by colour using machines
- It is washed to remove impurities and crushed into fine grains called cullet
- The cullet is melted in a furnace at over 1,500°C
- Depending on the desired end result, raw materials like iron or boron may be added to give the recycled glass particular properties
- Globs (of liquid glass) are pressed, blown, or moulded into new products.
The Benefits of Recycling Glass
There are many incentives for businesses to recycle glass. The most obvious of these are financial reasons. For starters, businesses that choose to recycle their glass avoid paying landfill taxes. This is expanded upon in our article on the importance of waste management for businesses in the UK. When businesses do so with expert services like those offered by Great Western Recycling, they can feel safe in the knowledge that their glass waste will be properly recycled to be reused in new products.
Recycling glass also has many benefits for businesses wanting to cut down costs from waste more generally. Ensuring that waste glass gets recycled, as opposed to being sent to landfill, means that your expenditure isn’t wasted on rubbish – instead, it goes back into the economy as a reusable, sustainable resource. Moreover, if you have to pay your employees to sort recycling, that’s time and money that could be dedicated to furthering your business aims.
The World Wide Fund (WWF) for Nature also lists a number of very important environmental benefits to recycling glass. Melting cullet, as opposed to the melting of raw materials in making glass from scratch, can occur at lower temperatures and therefore uses much less energy. Less energy used means more money saved in glass production and fewer emissions from glass-making practices. Glass recycling also contributes to the global effort of reducing waste output into landfill. As we’ve all heard, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (a floating pile of rubbish estimated to be twice the size of Texas) is just one of the many landfill-related atrocities in the world today, so reducing our contribution to them is critical for our planet.
Business Waste Management with Great Western Recycling
As one of the region’s leaders in waste management solutions, Great Western Recycling has a highly capable and dedicated team with expertise especially in dealing with glass recycling. We collect across England and South Wales with our 240-litre glass bottle recycling bins in which all colours of glass can be collected simultaneously.
For more information about glass recycling with Great Western Recycling, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with our team. We offer bespoke glass bottle recycling services tailored to match your needs, including self-set collection schedules and an online service account to control collections easily. Interested? Contact our friendly team today!
See more: Recycling Benefits for Businesses
See more: Types of Waste in Business – Understanding the Different Types of Waste