Welcome to the Glass Age

128 physical and chemical properties of glass during the recycling process. Various tints of the two basic colors (amber and green) exist and pose no issue from a recycling point of view. Moreover, these tints are generally standardized (for green bottles, the most common tints are Georgia green, emerald green, champagne green and dead leaf green). Tints outside the standardized specifications are relatively rare and can be easily diluted in the mass of mainstream glass. The environmental benefits that this continued cycle can bring are exponential. Today, glass producers use more recycled content than virgin materials in our packaging: on average, 52% of the raw materials we use are made up of recycled glass. This is crucial to meeting UN goals on Responsible Production and Consumption, because compared to producing new glass from raw materials, every ton of recycled glass used in the furnace avoids the extraction of 1.2 tons of virgin raw materials. What’s more, every additional 10% of recycled glass in the furnace reduces the CO 2 emissions by 5%, while also cutting back on energy consumption by 3%. Figure 8.2. The Close the Glass Loop partnership brings together members of the glass value chain with the objective of more and better-quality recycling in Europe through each stage of the recycling journey. Source: FEVE. Close the Glass Looop: A European platform with 11 national platforms