Welcome to the Glass Age

126 patterns and fostering sustainable cities, glass is in a class of its own. Glass is the only packaging material which is not just reusable and refillable, but also infinitely recyclable in a closed bottle-to- bottle loop. What does that mean in real terms? That bottle of wine you’re saving for dinner tonight may have started its life as a six-pack of beer, a jar of jam, or even a pot of face cream. And if you make sure to drop it off at the bottle bank afterwards, it could be back on the shelves living a whole new life in as little as a month. That’s because the same glass material can be indefinitely reused without any loss of quality and recycled again and again into new bottles and jars. Once produced, a glass bottle becomes the main resource needed to produce new bottles —meaning the more recycled content that can be used, the more we can reduce our need for virgin raw materials. And all of this adds up to lowering energy and CO 2  emissions, crucial if we want to keep global temperature rise to well below 2ºC in line with commitments to the Paris Agreement and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. All of this makes glass unrivalled in its environmental credentials. Join us as we look deeper into the miracles of glass, and what it represents for planet, people, and society, as we work towards a circular economy that works for all. And the industry wants to collect more and better into the bottle-to-bottle production! Close the Glass Loop [3], a multi-stakeholder partnership, brings together the glass packaging value chain with the shared objective of achieving a 90% average EU collection rate of used glass packaging by 2030 and improving the quality of collected glass so that more recycled content can be used in a new production loop. It is important however to point out that not all kinds of glass materials can be recycled into a closed loop. Soda-lime glass is the composition used for the majority of glass containers put on the market and is perfectly recyclable into new bottles. However, other compositions such as crystal glass must not be collected into bottle banks because it can’t be recycled —in fact, this kind of glass can actually contaminate the entire glass recycling process because it may contain lead. Glass bottles are available in a large range of colors, but only three are mainstream and represent the vast majority of the bottles on the EU market: flint (transparent), green and amber glass. Color choice depends upon several factors, ranging from aesthetics to UV-resistance —yet color separation is an important step in recycling, to ensure that all glass collected can be recycled, depending on local specificities like production versus consumption. This color separation can take place either at A circular economy that works for the good of the planet There’s nothing like glass when it comes to packaging that’s both reusable and infinitely recyclable. With endless lives, glass can be recycled again and again, in an endless loop, into new bottles and jars. And recycling rates are at a record high: today, 7 in 10 glass bottles are collected for recycling in the EU, which is a global leader in household recycling with collection systems that have been perfected over decades. Yet it may surprise you to learn that despite its recyclability, the inherent properties of glass do not become corrupted over time. Again and again, glass can be made a new using recycled content along with the natural raw ingredients, and new bottles and jars will be just as high in quality as older products. All of this makes glass a permanent material —ideal to maintain a true circular material loop. Due to the strength of their chemical bonds, permanent materials are not damaged by the recycling process and can stay in the recycling loop indefinitely, as long as they are properly collected, treated and re-melted. Today, a record 78% of all container glass put on the market in Europe is collected for recycling. For a breakdown by country, see Figure 8.1 and through the link with the latest available data [2].