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Glass Bottles And Jars
The average household produces 26.82 kilograms of Glass containers per year. Glass containers consist of 7.44% of the total waste stream and locally 96.31% of all Glass produced is recovered.
Glass bottles and jars used to contain food or beverages are acceptable for recycling through the Bluewater Recycling Association program.
How to Prepare Material: Please rinse glass bottles and jars and place loose in your blue box. Please also remove lids and place with other steel containers in your blue box.
What Happens after the Material Leaves your Blue Box? When the containers collected from the curbside are brought to the MRF, they are mixed and have no useful purpose. The Association utilizes several technology based pieces of equipment to sort all of the containers collected from 125, 000 people.
Through various levels of sortation, the aluminium, plastic and steel are removed and what is left is the glass material. This material is inspected by a material handler to ensure a contaminant free end product. This material is sorted into clear and coloured glass, and is stored in an external storage until there is enough material for a load. When there is enough material for a load, the material is loaded into a truck and shipped to various companies, who will process the glass and prepare it to be used in the manufacturing of new glass products.
What Happens after the Material Leaves Bluewater? Recycling operators collect, and sort by colour (depending upon the buyer's request) then ship old glass to facilities where new containers are produced. These loads are inspected by the glass manufacturer to ensure that material is acceptable. Recycled clear glass used to make new clear glass must be 99.5% pure. Conversely, up to half of the waste glass used in making green bottles can be different in colour. Clear and coloured glass is sorted, processed and re-manufactured separately.
The first step in re-manufacturing is to grind the glass into small pieces called cullet. Magnets and air are used in a process called beneficiation, to remove metal, paper and other contaminants. From here the clean cullet is sent to the furnace where it is mixed with sand, limestone and soda ash which are used in the making of new glass. For clear glass 25-30% cullet is added to the virgin material. If sufficient quantities of cullet could be found, clear glass could be made from 100% recycled material. Green bottles can be made from nearly 70% coloured cullet. Upon exiting the furnace, new glass is mechanically shaped and finished into an array of bottles and jars.
Some glass by-passes the obvious avenue of becoming the same product. Fibre glass and reflective paint can both be derived from old containers. Glass can act as a substitute for a portion of the aggregate used in asphalt. Three million bottles can be used in paving a single lane more than one metre deep, for a distance of one kilometre. Recycled glass is also used in the making of geotextiles, which becomes items such as sewer pipes. Ground glass is useful as an abrasive in sandblasting processes, too. Coloured glass can also be added to stucco allowing the wall covering to be applied in a variety of hues.
For more information, click here for another fact sheet. |
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