Is kerbside recycling of glass just for show?

By Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Time and again kerbside recycling vehicles, and those collecting glass from bottle banks, can be observed dumping mixed bottles and jars – white, brown, green, etc. – into the same bays on the vehicle without any separation of colors.

How can this then be recycled into new glass?

Such mixed glass cannot be recycled into new bottles and such like and thus, I would suggest, this glass is then just being ground up to be turned into aggregate or for products where the coloring does not matter.

Instead of kerbside recycling of glass we need to get back to deposits and returns on glass bottles and, ideally, also include glass jars in the same schemes and systems. It can be done; it was done before and is still being done in other countries.

It can be guaranteed that if one would put, say, 10pence deposit on a small glass bottle and small glass jars and maybe 20pence on large bottles and jars, none of those would be wasted but would all be brought back. If not by the original owner and user by children and other people who will pick them up to claim the deposit. This is not rocket science so, maybe, government could stop behaving as if it is.

While it may be true that recycling glass into new only takes a fraction of the energy to making bottles from scratch, a lot more energy and resources would be saved if we simply reused bottles and jars by cleaning and refilling them. As said, it used to be done with bottles and also can work with jars.

© 2011