Let’s take a look at glass. Or even better, let’s look through glass. What do you see? Technically, glass is not a solid, it’s a “super-cooled fluid”. Although this only really matters if you are a university student who is required to know that after many year, an old window will be thicker at the bottom due to the slow flow of glass under the influence of gravity.

The ingredients for making glass is 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. These range from glass fibres used in insulation via plate glass used in windows and car windscreens, to container glass used in bottles and jars.

A huge amount of energy is used in the creation of glass, both production and pre-production. So using recycled glass to make thing such as recycled vases must be a good thing, right?

Up to a point. Unfortunately, most glass we buy in products is actually brand new and rarely recycled. The main reason why this is the norm is because many manufacturer insist on uniformity, and the only way to achieve this is by creating brand new glass

One of the best ways to re-use glass is to empty out and clean commonly used glass products, such as bottles, and use them again for their original contents. In the UK this only happens for the milk bottles that are still delivered to some of our doors. Each of these bottles are generally reused around 12 times. The reason why this form of reuse is so successful is because not only do milk bottles get dropped off, but the old ones are also collected. The reasons why other bottles are never reused (at least in the UK) include the unwillingness of major retailers to handle the returns process, the logistical cost of returning imported bottles (think New Zealand wines), and the nervousness of marketers about the integrity of their brand images.

So most bottles are ground down to make a raw material called cullet, which could then be re-melted to form part of glass production. 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. The majority of bottles that do end up being recycled are made from brand new glass. Your recycling efforts won’t change that. The reason is that the cost of transporting cullet is high due to it’s uncertain composition, also, glass makers have precise requirements, making recycling glass almost impossible.

Plate glass has an even worse excuse. 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? Straight into landfill sites. The reason for this is because it’s simply too costly to seperate the glass from the rest of the unit.

It is a real challenge to find a shop that sells products created from used glass. The ones that are selling recycled glass products should be envouraged to do so as they are leading the way and proving that this 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.