The Glass Mountain Myth

So, is there a glass mountain???

What is the "glass mountain"?

It’s a reference to the imbalance in the supply of glass to recycle, compared to the demand for recycled glass and products made from it.

Glass is perfect for recycling – you can recycle it back into new bottles and jars over and over again, without its clarity deteriorating. And glass products can use up to 90% recycled material.

Is there a problem with recycling glass?

A major barrier to recycling glass in the UK is the shortage of clear ‘cullet’ (the term for waste glass) available.

We produce plenty of clear glass in the UK, but export a lot of it as bottles for spirits. We just don’t put enough clear glass in recycling banks.

By comparison, we import a large amount of green glass, principally as wine bottles but do manage to recycle it. In fact the green bottles we make in the UK contain at least 85% recycled green glass.

So we need to send more clear glass to be recycled, rather than to landfill.

How much glass do we use and recycle?

We use around 2.5 million tonnes of container glass in the UK. Around 629,000 tonnes of that may be imported.

In 2005 we recycled 1,259,000 tonnes of cullet. So there’s still some way to go.

There’s still work to do in the business sector too – pubs throw away 600,000 tonnes of glass every year. And most of that is currently going to landfill.

How is recycled glass used?

There are both fairly standard and quite unusual uses for recycled glass.

• New bottles and jars either at home or abroad
• ‘Processed sand’ – finely ground glass for filtration media or golf bunkers
• In construction products such as bricks and concrete blocks

So the future is pretty bright for recycled glass products – just as long as we keep recycling to meet the increasing demand.