Glass Fact File

Because glass can be downcycled it avoids being thrown into the landfill, which makes container glass a really valuable environmentally friendly packaging material. The downcycle refers to something that can be recycled into something of a lesser quality. For a glass manufacturer, the use of cullet (recycled glass) is of an extreme benefit. Cullet is the term that the industry uses to identify crushed glass and is a really critical secondary raw material. As well as the savings in raw material use, about 2.5 – 3% of energy is saved for every 10% of cullet used instead of raw materials, as no ‘reaction energy’ is needed to melt cullet. London Glazing are green glass suppliers. More than 67% of all glass in the form of bottles and jars in the EU are taken for recycling. This is the equivalent to 25 billion jars and bottles or 11 million tons being collected around europe. Glass itself is 100% recyclable and can be reused an for ever in a closed loop system. A recycling closed loop means a material can be used over and over again in a closed loop system like for glass bottles. This avoids downcycling, landfill or incineration. The waste experts in the EU, think that recycling is the best environmental option over energy recovery and landfill. London Glaziers recycle all glass.

Straight From Nature.
Glass comes from natural, sustainable and very abundant materials like sand, soda ash and limestone.  Glass is not made from scarce resources such as oil, and therefore it helps to prevent the exploitation of fossil fuels. The glass production actual needs energy to melt the raw materials and also the recycled glass but this energy is not obtained from fossil fuels such as oil.  Glass can be made with practically any energy source. The use of fossil fuel is actually very recent in the more than 2500 years of glassmaking. Wherever possible, the part of fossil CO2 emissions arising from burning fossil fuels to melt glass could be greatly reduced by switching to renewable or low carbon energy sources.