Glass remelting has dropped to its worst performance in five years

The rate of remelting glass has dropped to its worst performance since 2004 even though the UK has exceeded glass recycling expectations, hitting the EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive targets.

Out of the 1,613,000 tonnes of glass recycled in the UK just 665,561 tonnes was returned to UK glass manufacturers for remelting to be made into fresh glass packaging.

However, according to figures from the National Packaging Waste Database, due to an increase of 150,000 tonnes of recycled packaging glass the UK has actually hit the EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive, which aims for 60% of all glass packaging to be recycled. As a result, a huge 1,613,000 tonnes of glass has been recycled in the past year but this is because the cullet is being used as building aggregate instead of being remelted.

British Glass recycling manager Rebecca Cocking said: “The UK glass container sector saw a further decline in the amount of glass returning to remelt. This is unfortunately because quality and availability is deteriorating due to the nature in which glass is collected by local authorities and waste management companies which are focusing on glass as a waste and not a resource.”

An inside glass manufacturer felt a simple separation system would work. He said: “Since the bottle bank system has disappeared the glass colours are mixed together. This makes it very difficult to extract the correct colours of a good quality and use them in the furnace.

“A colour separation system at the source of collection would mean a lot more of it would go back into making glass. We are struggling to get white flint coloured glass in particular.”

The UK manufactures 8 billion new bottles and jars every year and demand for exported recycled packaging glass rose in 2008 by 65,000 on the previous year to 340,000 tonnes.

Cocking added: “The prices offered for glass have seen ‘little to no change’ during 2008. Such stability on the glass market offers local authorities and contractors the security of long term contracts with guaranteed tonnages and prices.”