What is the Glass Mountain?

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.

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.

In 2007 the UK recycled around 57% of container glass (like bottles and jars). This figures represents an increase of 70% over the last seven years but we still lag behind other countries such as Switzerland and Finland who recycle more than 90% of their glass.

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
• 'Glassphalt' for road surfacing

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