Recycling Glass, Why Bother?
Every year, the average family consumes around 500 glass bottles or jars. There are good reasons why these bottles and jars should all be recycled.
- Glass can be recycled over and over again.
- Separating and recycling glass could significantly reduce waste management costs.
- Landfill tax doubled over the years, furthering increasing disposal costs.
Glass recycling helps the environment
The amount of energy needed to melt recycled glass is considerably less than that needed to melt raw materials to make new bottles and jars. Recycling one bottle can save enough energy to power a television set for one and a half hours.
Glass recycling reduces CO2 emissions
Not only does glass save energy by using recycled glass, but each 1000 tonnes of recycled glass that we melt saves 314 tonnes of CO2.
Glass recycling conserves the landscape
Using recycled glass in furnaces saves hundreds of thousands of tonnes of primary raw materials each year. This reduces the need for quarrying raw materials and conserves the countryside.
Glass recycling reduces landfill
Every tonne of glass recycled extends the life of our increasingly scarce landfill sites and conserves the British countryside.
Glass recycling cuts waste disposal costs
In terms of weight, glass makes up about 8% of the household waste stream. Any increase in the amount of glass recycled means savings on waste collection and disposal costs, which are increasing due to landfill tax.
Glass recycling increases public awareness of the benefits of recycling
Every individual can play an active part in conservation by simply supporting glass recycling. This is the first step to becoming an environmentally active consumer.
Glass recycling creates employment
Estimates indicate that 500 jobs are created for every 100,000 tonnes of glass collected for recycling. Recycling all the glass we currently throw away would create 7500 new jobs.
