C H A P T E R

11
Glass Waste
John H. Butler, Paul Hooper
Department of Environmental and Geographical Sciences, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK

O U T L I N E

1. The Glass Industry 151 3. Container Glass Recycling Processes 160

1.1. Glass Production 152
4. The Future of Glass Recycling 161
1.2. Environmental Issues 153
4.1. Introduction of Container
2. Glass Reuse 155 Deposit Schemes 161
2.1. Container Glass Recycling 156 4.2. Bottle Deposit Return Machines 162
2.2. Flat Glass Recycling 158 4.3. Regulatory Systems 162
2.2.1. Flat Glass Construction 4.4. Coloured Glass 162
and Demolition Waste 158 4.5. Infrastructure Maintenance
2.2.2. Flat Glass End-of-Life and Change 162
Motor Vehicle Waste 159
5. Conclusion 162
2.3. Summary of Glass Waste Streams 159

1. THE GLASS INDUSTRY for motor vehicle manufacture [1]. Other

Glass is in the background of the daily lives of
most people. It is manufactured from plentiful
raw materials and can be readily reused as feed-
stock in glass production. Between 80% and 85%
of the mass output from the worldwide glass
industry is either in the form of containers for
the food, beverage, and pharmaceutical indus-
tries, or flat glass for building construction or
product segments, whilst only constituting
about 15% of the mass output, produce high-
value technical and consumer products by
comparison with container and flat glass.
However, the potential for glass recycling comes
largely from the container and flat glass sectors,
because of their dominance in terms of mass,
and their relatively uniform chemical composi-
tion, with soda limeesilica glass accounting

Waste Doi: 10.1016/B978-0-12-381475-3.10011-7 151 Ó 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
152 11. GLASS WASTE

for virtually all the container and flat glass
produced. Hence, this chapter will focus on
these categories of glass when discussing the
environmental issues arising from glass produc-
tion and consumption.
1.1. Glass Production
The demand for glass containers, being
dependent on sales of beverages and food,
does not fluctuate greatly with business cycles,
by contrast with flat glass demand. Annual
production has increased over the past decade,
but not at the same rate as growth in demand
for packaged beverages and food, because of
competition from other packaging materials.
We have calculated that global production of
glass containers in 2007 was 72 million tonnes
(72
106 t), based on data in ISO Business
Plan TC/63 for Glass Containers in 2004 [2],
the EU 2008 Non-metallic Mineral Products
Report for Glass, and Official Journal of the Euro-
pean Union C 317/7 on competitiveness of the
European glass industry [3,4].
Table 11.1 summarises production for 2007 by
regional groupings, citing source data and
assumptions. Although data for the European
Union (EU) and the United States can be quoted

TABLE 11.1 Global Container Glass Production

Reported data
Conversion Production Assumed
Reference year Unit of measure Total rate tonnes Prodn 2007

Europe (EU27)1 2007 Tonnes 22,429,390 1.00 22,429,390 22,430,000

2
Russian Federation 2006 Units million 9,800 0.0025 2,450,000 2,570,000
3
USA 2006 Tonnes 9,638,516 0.907184 8,743,907 9,180,000
4
2008 Tonnes
5
South America 2007 Tonnes 12,500,000 1.00 12,500,000 12,500,000
6
Japan 2006 US$ Million 1,864.62 0.00080 2,119,708 2,230,000
7
China 2004 Tonnes 7,852,200 0.907184 7,123,390 10,010,000
India8 2008 Tonnes 1,400,000 1.00 1,400,000 1,400,000

Subtotal 60,320,000
Rest of world 11,680,000
Total9 2001 Tonnes 57,000,000 1.00 57,000,000 72,000,000
1
FEVE European Container Glass Federation 2009 for container glass statistics. European Commission 2009, Draft Reference Document on Best Available
Techniques in the Glass Manufacturing Industry.
2
Conversion units to tonnes based on Faraday Packaging and Glass Technology Services 2006. Light-weight Glass ContainersdThe Route to Effective.
Waste Minimisation, WRAP, Banbury, UK Unipack RU 2007, Russian Market of Food Glass Containers. http://article.unipack.ru/eng/20538/.
3
Container Recycling Institute 2008, Beverage Market Data Analysis for 2006, CRI, Culver City, California. Beverage containers only.
4
US Environmental Protection Agency 2009. http://www.epa.gov/osw
5
Undata, Industrial Statistics Commodity Database, April 2009 update, United Nations Statistics Division Argentine National Wine Institute, Rigolleau
S.A. 2009, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
6
UN Statistics DatabasedContainer Glass Production. Conversion at reported tonnes/US$ ratio for year 2001, then uplifted for yen appreciation to the
US$ to 2008.
7
Chinese Ceramic Society, 2006, Review and Prospect of the Glass Industry in China.
8
T. E. Narasimhan, 2009, Business Standard 2 April 2009, Glass Container Sector Gallops Ahead. http://www.business-standard.com/india/index2.php.
9
ISO 2004, Business Plan ISO TC/63, Glass Containers, (forecasting 14% p.a. growth to 2005) Assumed Growth ¼ 5% p.a.

II. WASTE STREAMS

 THE GLASS INDUSTRY
with some confidence, those for other regions
are subject to varying degrees of accuracy
through incomplete data collection, and the
use of reported data to justify commercial and
tariff cases.
By contrast with container glass, the demand
for flat glass can be very cyclical, depending on
the level of activity in the building construction
and automotive industries. Global flat glass
production for 2006 is presented in Table 11.2.
As in the case of container glass, we believe
that the figures for the EU and United States
are more reliable than some of the data for other
regional groupings.
1.2. Environmental Issues
The main environmental impacts in glass
making are the high-energy use in batch
melting, and the resultant gaseous emissions
from fuel combustion and the heat reaction of
components of the batch mix. The usual way
of providing heat to melt glass is by burning
fossil fuels above a bath of batch material, which
is continuously fed into, and then withdrawn
from the furnace in a molten condition. Heat is
provided mainly by radiative transmission
from the furnace crown, which is heated by
the flames to up to 1650  C, with some heat
coming also from the flames themselves. The
molten glass in the furnace is held at a constant
153
temperature for approximately 24 h for produc-
tion of containers and 72 h for float glass [5]. In
general, the energy necessary for melting and
mixing the batch components accounts for
more than 75% of the total energy requirements
of glass manufacture [5], with the raw material
procurement and formation of life cycle stages
accounting for the other 25%.
Although pure silica can be made into high-
quality glass, this requires the batch to be
heated to a temperature of around 2300  C, at
which point its viscosity is reduced to a liquid
state suitable for the subsequent formulation
stage, the ‘melting point’. By adding sodium
oxide (Na2O) obtained from the addition of
soda ash (Na2CO3), the melting point is low-
ered to about 1500  C [6]. However, the soda
makes any glass produced water soluble. To
overcome this, calcium oxide (CaO) obtained
from limestone (CaCO3) is added to the batch
to render the glass chemically durable. Magne-
sium oxide (MgO) and aluminium oxide
(Al2O3) may also be used to enhance the chem-
ical durability, whereas other materials are
added to provide colour. The resulting glass
contains about 70% to 74% silica, 12% to 15%
sodium oxide, and 10% to 15% calcium oxide
by weight, plus a small amount of colouring
and other material, and is called silicaesoda
lime glass. It accounts for about 90% of manu-
factured glass.

TABLE 11.2 Global Flat Glass Production

Million tonnes

Former North South South Rest of

Europe Soviet Union America America Japan China East Asia world Total

Flat glass capacity (2006) 11.00 2.70 6.90 1.00 1.25 19.00 4.80 1.35 48.00
Flat glass production (2006) 9.70 2.70 6.00 1.60 1.05 16.00 3.80 3.15 44.00

Sources: Pilkington Group Ltd., St. Helens, U.K. 2007, Pilkington and the Flat Glass Industry; Haley C.V.U., 2009, Through China’s Looking Glass; Subsidies
to the Chinese Glass Industry 2004e2008, Economic Research Institute; European Commission 2009, Draft Reference Document on Best Available Techniques
in the Glass Manufacturing Industry; Ecorys Research and Consulting 2008, FWC Sector Competitive StudiesdCompetitiveness of the Glass Sector,
Rotterdam, Netherlands. http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/newsroom/cf/document.cfm?action¼display&doc_id¼4044&userservice_id¼1.

II. WASTE STREAMS

154
Fuel oil and natural gas are the predominant
energy sources for melting, a small amount of
electricity is also used. The theoretical energy
requirements for sodaesilica lime glass are
given in Table 11.3 [7]. The calculation assumes
that all available heat is fully used and has three
components:
• The heat required to raise the temperature of
the raw materials from 20  C to 1500  C
• The latent heat required to enable the
reactions between the batch components to
form the glass
• The heat content of the gases (principally
CO2) released from the batch during melting
The delivered process energy actually
needed is higher than the theoretical figures
[8] due to waste gas and structural heat losses,
and it depends on the furnace efficiency. Large
modern cross-fired regenerative furnaces
[capacity > 500 tonnes per day (500 t d1)] oper-
ating with a typical energy efficiency of 50%
would result in energy use of approximately
5.5 GJ t1 for a container batch containing virgin
feedstock only.
The principal emissions to air from the batch-
melting process result from the combustion of
fuel and decomposition of the soda ash and
limestone as they heat up. Once limestone is
heated above 850  C, it will start to decompose
as in the reaction:
Heat þ CaCO3 /CaO þ CO2
TABLE 11.3 Theoretical Secondary Energy
Requirements in Batch Melting
Using Virgin Feedstock
Soda limeesilica glass Energy/GJ tL1
Endothermic melting heat 1.89
Latent heat of fusion of materials 0.49
(HChem)
Heat of gases emitted (HChem) 0.30
Total energy use 2.68
II. WASTE STREAMS
11. GLASS WASTE
Similarly, soda ash decomposes to produce
sodium oxide (Na2O) as in:
Heat þ Na2 Co3 /Na2 O þ CO2
Emissions of gaseous outputs from other
additions to the batch produce oxides of
sulphur and nitrogen. Based on an input of
150 and 190 kg of limestone and soda ash into
the batch mix, 145 kg of process CO2 per tonne
of glass would be produced.
Emissions from combustion per unit of
energy will vary depending on the energy
source, the most common of which for batch
melting are methane processed from natural
gas and fuel oil. Emissions from methane
combustion will follow the reaction:
CH4 þ 2O2 /CO2 2H2 O
and that for fuel oil:
C14 H20 þ 21:502 /14CO2 þ 15H2 O
Based on a delivered energy use of 5.5 GJ t1
in the batch melt, and converting this to the
mass of methane and fuel oil consumed, CO2
emissions would be 280 and 415 kg t1 of glass,
respectively, because of the different combus-
tion carbon outputs for given masses of
methane and fuel oil with the same energy
content. As all the inputs are in powder or gran-
ular form, there may also be releases of particu-
lates into the atmosphere. The principal
emissions to air are summarised in Table 11.4.
There are three broad approaches to reduce
the environmental impacts of glass production:
first, reductions in energy use; second, ‘end of
pipe’ emission abatement measures; and third,
for glass containers, product ‘lightweighting’.
Energy intensity efficiencies are achieved
through more energy efficient furnace design
and substituting recycled glass cullet for virgin
raw materials. The use of cullet avoids the use
of heat in thermal reactions between batch

TABLE 11.4 Principal Emissions to Air from Soda
LimeeSilica Glass Batch Melting Per
Tonne of Container Glass Produced
CO2
Using natural gas (CH4)
Using fuel oil
NOx
SOx
Dust (without secondary abatement)
Dust (with secondary abatement)
HCl (without secondary abatement)
HCl (with secondary abatement)
HF (without secondary abatement)
HF (with secondary abatement)
H2O (evaporation and combustion)
Source: European Commission. Integrated Pollution Prevention and
Control - Reference Document on Best Available Techniques in the Glass
Making Industry. Brussels: European Union, 2001, Table 3.8.
components and loss of heat in gaseous emis-
sions, and it provides additional liquidity at
lower temperatures in the batch, thereby
reducing the energy used to heat the compo-
nents. Compared with the theoretical energy
requirements of 2.7 GJ t1 for batch melting
primary of raw materials, the energy required
to simply melt glass is 1.9 GJ t1, and it is
commonly estimated that substituting 10% of
cullet for a similar weight of requisite virgin
raw material mix can save 2.5% of energy.
Container glass typically has a short life
cycle, being primarily used to package bever-
ages and food. Production and use are often
within the same country or region, although
they may be distant from one another in the
case of specialist products, for example, estate
bottled wines, or pharmaceutical products. By
contrast, flat glass, principally used in motor
vehicle manufacture and the construction
industries, has a long in-use life span. In the
case of buildings, production of the glass used
GLASS REUSE 155
may be distant from its point of use, although
usually within the same national or regional
boundaries, whereas the glass used for motor
Emissions/kg vehicle windows may well be shipped across
national and regional boundaries to its point of
430
use. However, the two types of glass each
560 present their own set of recycling challenges,
2.4 which will be reviewed separately.
2.5
0.4 2. GLASS REUSE
0.024
Within the waste management hierarchy,
0.041
reuse is considered before moving to the next
0.028 option down, recycling. In the case of flat glass,
0.008 because of the dispersed nature of its use, lack of
homogeneity, and its long life span, reuse is not
0.003
a viable option financially or environmentally.
1800 By contrast, the glass used for manufacturing
containers has a similar raw material mix, apart
from colouring agents, and has a short in-use
life. Furthermore, production and use of the
containers often take place within the same
country or administrative region. For glass
containers, the reuse option is therefore consid-
ered before recycling.
Supermarket retailers are the most influential
decision makers in determining the viability of
reuse of primary packaging, including glass.
Since 1970, supermarket chains have accelerated
the development of distribution systems on the
basis of a one-way packaging flow from
producer to consumer, and this trend has been
further stimulated by the increasing globalisa-
tion of retail supply chains. Even in those coun-
tries with retake systems, underpinned by
container deposit legislation, recycling rather
than refill is becoming the norm. In effect, pack-
aging recovery costs have very largely been
externalised into the recycling route, where the
burden is picked up by consumers, city and
regional government recycling infrastructure,
and the waste management industry.
For refill systems, the environmental and
financial transport burdens of the collect and
II. WASTE STREAMS
156 11. GLASS WASTE
return system and the cleaning and sterilisation
process before refill have to be measured against
the burdens of cullet collection, processing, and
batch melting. This has been the subject of
numerous studies demonstrating the significant
environmental benefits of reusing rather than
recycling glass packaging [9e13]. A comprehen-
sive study, placing economic valuations on
internal costs and social and environmental
externalities, presented data demonstrating
that refillable glass containers are preferable to
the recycling of single trip bottles from a purely
environmental standpoint, subject to a combina-
tion of distances involved between filler and
distribution centre and number of times the
bottles are refilled [14].
Even given globalised markets and the
current dominance of supermarket and hyper-
market chains in retail distribution, there may
still be opportunities for smaller scale glass
container reuse, for example, in the rapidly
growing microbrewery sector serving localised
markets in the United Kingdom and New
England. There are also a number of countries
and market segments where the refillable glass
bottle is used extensively, in many cases sup-
ported by container deposit legislation.
Canada’s brewers maintain a ‘closed-loop’
container return system. The Brewers Associa-
tion of Canada reports that returnable and reus-
able bottles make up almost 73% of packaged
Canadian-brewed beer and 97% of them are
returned by consumers [15]. The Environmental
register of Packaging PVR, Ltd., Helsinki, shows
that in 2007, 76% of all used glass packaging in
Finland was refilled [16]. The 2008 Annual
Report of Dansk Retursystem A/S shows that
while in Denmark the one-way packaging share
of the beverage market is increasing year on
year, refillables still accounted for 53% with
a 100% return rate [17]. Data for Germany [18]
show that refillable bottles accounted for 47%
of all types of beverage consumed. It is claimed
that in Russia some 60% to 70% of all glass
bottles used are returned for refill [19]. In other
II. WASTE STREAMS
countries, the refillable glass container lives on
for locally produced beverages or for niche
markets, for example in the United Kingdom,
the refillable milk bottle delivered to and
collected from the doorstep. Finally, in some
developing nations such as India and Brazil,
the cost of new bottles often stimulates the
collection and refill of glass bottles for selling
carbonated and other drinks.
2.1. Container Glass Recycling
In theory, container glass can be made from
100% cullet, and there is no limitation on the
number of times that used container glass can
be fed back into the raw material input cycle.
Consequently, the total potential for recycling
is all the container glass used in a given period,
which, given its short life cycle, is for all prac-
tical purposes the amount produced. However,
there are practical limitations to this theoretical
100% use of cullet. First, given the dispersed
nature of the waste stream, the marginal envi-
ronmental and financial burdens of collecting
increasing fractions of the post-consumer waste
(PCW) container glass waste stream may
increase to the point where they exceed the
marginal benefits. Second, production waste
cullet normally contributes about 10% of the
batch mix, which limits the amount of PCW
cullet that can be used. Having said that,
a review of the current status of PCW glass recy-
cling across the world reveals that any limits on
using PCW-sourced cullet in container glass
production are far from being reached.
On the basis of public domain information, we
have estimated worldwide glass container
consumption, reuse and recycling, the results of
which are given in Table 11.5. Principal data
sources are shown in Annex A. Although numer-
ical data have not been available, we have made
an assessment of the waste disposal options
being used in a region or country, based on
reviews of the municipal waste management
practices obtained from press and industry
 TABLE 11.5 Global Glass Container Consumption and Recycling
Latin America
Australasia/Oceania North America Sub Saharan
and Caribbean Europe Mena Asia
Africa
Glass waste

EU 27 + NOR,
New Zealand

China (Urban
South Africa
management

Federation
Other (excl
Australia

CH, Turkey
Canada
Hawaii)

Russian
hierarchy

Areas)
U.S.A.

Japan
Egypt
Brazil

Other

Other

Other

Other

Other
India
II. WASTE STREAMS

Re-use (%) 68 45 ≈5 60–70 ≥ 70 ≈ 50

GLASS REUSE
Recycle (%) 37 50 28 11 3–10 64 ≤ 25 31 14

Sanitary landfill (%) 63 50 72 20 55 90–97 31 30–40 ≥ 75 79 ≤ 30 ≈ 50 86

Disposal sites

Year (tonnes mission) 2005 2008 2007 2008 2008 2007 No data 2008 2006 No data 2007 No data 2008 No data 2007 2004 2007 2007
available available available available
Consumption 0.95 0.30 0.30 13.46 1.37 1.57 17.82 3.04 1.90 0.80 1.69 7.60 2.28 4.05
Recycle/re-use 0.35 0.15 No data 3.78 1.09 0.71 11.47 1.98 ≤ 0.48 0.25 1.18 ≈ 3.8 0.32 No data

157
158 11. GLASS WASTE
articles and Web sites. These appear as shaded
areas in Table 11.5. As there is no national or local
government infrastructure for municipal waste
management and recycling for many underde-
veloped and developing countries, there is
a consequent lack of reliable data in these
regions. However, this does not mean that no
recycling or reuse takes place. On the contrary,
high rates of urban recycling in many countries
are tied in with poverty, so that the very poor,
such as the Kabari in India, find a source of
income by picking recyclable material from
waste left in streets or on municipal dumps.
Calculated consumption amounts to 57
106 t
for those regions and countries for which data are
available and for the years quoted. This compares
with the global production of 72
106 t given in
Table 11.1. The difference between the two figures
is largely due to the lack of consumption data for
some regions and the limitation of some data to
beverage containers only. In developing countries
in particular, there is a huge annual increase in
beverage container use, up to 15% per annum in
the case of China, but glass takes an increasingly
lower share of the total, with predictions for the
growth in global container glass consumption in
the region of 3% to 5% [20].
2.2. Flat Glass Recycling
The recycling of flat glass largely depends on
the way in which construction and demolition
wastes (C&DW) end-of-life vehicles (ELVs)
and are treated. Approximately 70% of global
flat glass production is used in the building
and construction industries, 10% in motor
vehicle manufacture [21], and the remainder
for other uses. Recycling of such glass is largely
dependent on the management of the C&DW
and ELV waste streams.
2.2.1. Flat Glass Construction
and Demolition Waste
Despite C&DW waste being one of the largest
waste flows in the world, there is a significant
II. WASTE STREAMS
lack of consistent data about the total waste
stream and its management. One estimate for
China is that urban C&DW has reached 30% to
40% of the total urban waste generation because
of the large-scale construction and demolition
activities resulting from the accelerated urbaniza-
tion and city rebuilding [22]. Applying these
percentages to the total reported industrial waste
for China in 2004 of 1.089
109 t would give esti-
mated C&DW of between 325 and 425 million
tonnes per annum (325e425
106 t a1) [23].
With the rapid growth in construction projects
in China, these estimates are likely to significantly
understate the amount of C&DW for later years.
Estimates for some other countries/regions are
shown in Table 11.5, which also includes the
source references. Two studies characterising the
composition C&DW estimated the proportion of
flat glass in C&DW to be 0.4%  0.2% and 0.2%,
respectively [24,25]. These ratios are also applied
to the estimated C&DW to indicate the size of flat
glass waste arisings from that source.
Currently, there is little recycling of glass by
demolition companies due to financial viability.
Much brick and concrete C&DW is reused on
the construction sites in the form of hard core
once it has been crushed to an acceptable
particle size. Given that glass is an insignificant
part of total C&DW, it is frequently absorbed
into the hard core, or any material removed
from site for further processing. The exception
to this occurs in buildings where glass is a signif-
icant part of the external or internal construc-
tion. The reader is referred to Chapter 15 for
a fuller description of C&DW processing.
If flat glass can be collected without contam-
ination, it can be recycled to be incorporated in
new flat glass production. St. Gobain Glass,
United Kingdom, claims that it uses 30% flat
glass cullet in the manufacture of its float glass,
amounting to 3.6
104 t a1 [26], which would
include production waste. Nevertheless, the
incorporation of flat glass C&DW into building
aggregates for substrate is likely to remain the
main recycling option.
 GLASS REUSE
2.2.2. Flat Glass End-of-Life
Motor Vehicle Waste
Within the EU, the management of ELV waste
is regulated by Directive 2000/53/EC, which
aims inter alia, to increase the reuse, recycling,
and recovery of materials from ELVs. Total
ELV waste for 2007 was calculated as 6.12

106 t with 5.02
106 t being reused or recycled
[27]. According to a report submitted by GHK
to the EU DG XI [28], the average weight of glass
per ELV was calculated as 21.2 kg, which
applied to the 2007 ELV waste data would
give a figure of 1.3
105 t of ELV glass waste
in that year.
In the United States, the objectives of the
Automotive Recyclers Association include ‘to
promote automotive recycling’. A report pub-
lished in the United States [29] calculated that
the number of vehicles taken out of use in the
period 1989e1998 was 11.374
106 (Tables 1
and 2 of the report) with an average glass
weight of 39 kg (86 lbs) out of a total average
vehicle weight of 1.44 t (3165 lbs). This would
amount to 4.45
105 t a1 of waste glass.
In Japan, roughly five million cars are
disposed every year, with around a million of
159
these exported as second-hand vehicles [30].
Of the four million remaining, it is claimed
that nearly 100% are subject to recycling, with
a recycling rate of 75% by vehicle weight [31].
Based on the EU average of 21.2 kg of glass
per vehicle, flat glass waste from ELVs would
amount to approximately 8.5
104 t a1.
By the end of 2007, there were 43 million
vehicles with an average life of 15 years on the
roads of China. It is estimated that in each
year up to 2010, 4.8 million vehicles will be
scrapped [32]. Using an average of 21.2 kg of
glass per vehicle, ELV flat glass waste would
amount to around 1.00
105 t a1.
There is little, if any, collection of ELV glass
for feeding back into the flat glass production
loop, and the glass is generally treated as a waste
product from the metal and other materials
recovered from ELVs (see Chapters 6 and 20 of
this handbook for a description of ELV
recycling).
2.3. Summary of Glass Waste Streams
Based on data presented in the preceding
sections, the relative importance of the three

TABLE 11.6 Flat Glass Construction and Demolition Waste (C&DW) in Selected Countries Where C&DW Refers
to Construction and Demolition, Respectively

Tonnes million Europe1 USA2 China3 Japan4 Brazil5 India6

Year 2004 pre 2006 2005 2005 2001 2005

C&DW 450 295 425 76 69 30
6
Glass proportion (%) 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2
Flat glass C&DW 0.90 0.59 0.85 0.15 0.14 0.06
1
EU Taskforce on Sustainable Construction 2007, Accelerating the Development of the Sustainable Construction Market in Europe, EU Commission,
Brussels.
2
Construction Materials Recycling Association USA, Amount of C&DW Annually CMRA, Eola, Illinois.
3
National Bureau of Statistics of China 2005, Industrial Solid Wastes Produced, Table 21-1, Beijing.
4
Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport of Japan White Paper on Land, Infrastructure, Transport, and Tourism in Japan, 2008, 66.
5
John V.M., Angulo S.C., Miranda F.R., Agopyan V., Vasconcellos F. 2004, Strategies for Innovation in Construction and Demolition Waste Management
in Brazil, Department of Civil Construction, University of Sãn Paulo, Sãn Paulo Brazil.
6
Technology Information Forecasting and Assessment Department 2001. Utilisation of Waste from Construction Industry. Department of Science and
technology, Government of India 12% p.a. growth rate applied to reported 15 million tonnes for 2000 to 2005. http://www.docstoc.com/docs/17050867/
Indian-Construction-industry.

II. WASTE STREAMS

160 11. GLASS WASTE

TABLE 11.7 Relative Mass of Four Glass Waste Furthermore, in the drive to achieve high levels
Streams of recycling, sight is often lost of the aim of opti-
EU27 USA Japan China
mising the environmental gains, or at least this
becomes of secondary importance.
Container glass In Table 11.8, some key characteristics of
Year 2008 2008 2007 2007 container glass recycling have been classified
according to the end use of the cullet. Using
Tonnes million 17.82 13.46 3.28 7.6
cullet to produce containers is the most environ-
Flat Glass mentally benign option, not only because of the
C&DW energy saved in the batch melt but also because
the used glass containers can be fed back into
Year 2007 Pre 2006 Pre 2005 2005
the product loop continuously. The ability to
Tonnes million 0.9 0.59 0.15 0.85 do so depends on there being sufficient
ELVs demand, which in turn requires that the cullet
supplied meets the manufacturer’s specification
Year 2007 Pre 2005 Pre 2005 2007
for colour mix and purity, for example, in the
Tonnes million 0.01 0.04 0.08 0.10 United Kingdom, the WRAP PAS 101 specifica-
Proportion flat 5 4 7 11 tion, and in the United States, the Glass Pack-
glass of total (%) aging Institute’s ‘High Quality Cullet’ guide.
A key dependency for optimising environ-
mental benefit is the achievement of a balanced
principal glass waste streams in terms of mass is flow of material through the system. For this to
summarised in Table 11.7. Despite the variation happen, it is essential to have the necessary
in the source years and assumptions for the data capacity at each stage, without an over or under
presented, the many orders of magnitude differ- supply of material. In practice, the different
ence between the three waste streams illustrate motivations of the actors in the system can,
the dominant position that recycling container and often do, prevent this system balance being
glass, compared with flat glass, can play in the achieved, and may result in open-loop recy-
recycling challenge to reduce the environmental cling, for example, using cullet as a substrate
and resource impacts of glass production. in road construction. This situation arises
when there is insufficient demand for cullet of
a specific colour and grade for glass container
3. CONTAINER GLASS RECYCLING production. One reason for this may result
PROCESSES from there being an imbalance between regula-
tory recycling targets and commercial demand.
Although waste recycling has been regarded Replacing virgin feedstock with cullet avoids
as the waste management option of choice, it the Hchem and Hgas energy use shown in Table
has to be recognised that it carries its own envi- 11.3. Based on a furnace thermal efficiency of
ronmental and financial burdens [33]. Concep- 50%, a theoretical saving of the energy used in
tually, converting post-consumer glass into the glass container batch melt from 100% cullet
cullet is a straightforward process of collecting rather than 100% virgin feedstock would be in
material and removing contaminants, followed excess of 1.5 GJ t1 of delivered (secondary)
by colour separation and crushing to feedstock energy. Table 11.8 shows that, as a result of the
size ready for inclusion in the batch melt, but reduction in energy use and avoidance of heat
in practice, this is often difficult to achieve. reactions with soda ash and limestone, CO2

II. WASTE STREAMS

 THE FUTURE OF GLASS RECYCLING 161
TABLE 11.8 Characteristics of Container Glass Recycling and Cullet End Use

Glass container cullet

Closed loop / Open loop

Market demand / Regulatory driven

Type of recycling Product to product Material to material Material substitution

Type of use Used in container glass Used in other glass Used in nonglass
production production applications
Typical end products Glass bottles Fibre glass insulation Aggregates and
substrate
Secondary energy saving/ 1.5 GJ 1.5 GJ 0
tonne (batch melt)
CO2 emissions avoidance 215e250 200e230 0
kg/tonne (batch melt)

Maximum cullet 90 50 10e20

proportion (%)

Continual loop recycling Yes No No

Sources: Enviros Consulting Ltd. 2003, Glass RecyclingdLifetime Carbon Dioxide Emissions, British Glass Manufacturers Confederation, Sheffield; Butier
and Hooper, Dilemmas in optimising the environmental benefit from recycling: a case study of glass container waste management in the UK, Resources
Conservation and Recycling 45 (2005) 331e355.

emissions from the batch melt are reduced by
215 to 250 kg t1 if a theoretical 100% cullet is
used in place of virgin feedstock in glass
container production. As there is no limit to
the number of times glass can be recycled, these
savings can be repeated, depending on the effi-
ciency of the recycling regime in keeping waste
container glass within the loop [34]. Although
a similar one of energy saving is obtainable
from using cullet as raw material for producing
fibreglass, it is not possible to then recycle fibre-
glass as feedstock into further production cycles
[35]. At the other end of the spectrum, it has
been shown that reductions in the energy
burden through the use of cullet in aggregate
production are largely dependent on the
reduced transport resulting from using locally
produced cullet rather than more distant virgin
raw materials. In future cases, using cullet may
actually increase the energy burden compared
with using virgin feedstock [34].
4. THE FUTURE OF GLASS
RECYCLING
There are clear environmental and financial
benefits accruing from using glass cullet rather
than virgin feedstock in glass production. Based
on the data in Tables 11.1 and 11.5, we estimate
that 30% to 35% of the container glass consumed
globally enters the recycling loop, leaving room
for significant enhancements in recycling rates
to meet the demand of glass container manufac-
turers for quality cullet. Some initiatives to
enhance container glass recycling are consid-
ered below.
4.1. Introduction of Container
Deposit Schemes
Container deposit schemes have been shown
to be very effective in motivating householders
to recycle food and beverage containers. Thus,

II. WASTE STREAMS

162 11. GLASS WASTE
the 11 U.S. states with container deposit legisla-
tion consistently return glass container recycling
rates of between 66% and 96%, compared with
the 35% average for those states without
container deposit legislation [36]. Similar differ-
ences between those member states with and
without container deposit legislation are found
in the EU.
4.2. Bottle Deposit Return Machines
An enhancement to deposit schemes is the
provision of conveniently located reverse vend-
ing machines, often in supermarket stores,
where bottle deposits are returned once the
empty has been deposited in the machine.
4.3. Regulatory Systems
Regulatory systems where the target is to
maximise the amount collected for recycling
without the need to take into account maximis-
ing environmental benefit may encourage the
easy option of open-loop recycling. In the
United Kingdom, the Department of the Envi-
ronment, Food, and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) has
taken a lead on this issue by proposing to set
differentiated glass packaging recycling targets
for businesses by 2011, based on whether mate-
rial is recycled into open- or closed-loop
processes [37].
4.4. Coloured Glass
In some countries, to minimise city and local
government collection costs and maximise recy-
cling, there is a move away from collecting
colour-separated glass containers at source, to
collecting mixed colour glass containers or
even mixed material recyclate. This passes the
sorting and cleaning burden on to cullet proces-
sors. One development in overcoming the
problem of mixed coloured cullet is the intro-
duction of colour separation systems to identify
and remove glass cullet of different colours.
II. WASTE STREAMS
4.5. Infrastructure Maintenance
and Change
In the case of rapidly developing countries
and regions, there will be an increasing move-
ment from unregulated to city and local govern-
ment regulated systems, financed by local taxes
and other financial stimuli. During this transi-
tion, it will be important to ensure that regula-
tory systems take over from market-driven
ones, without there being a void created by
lack of financial motivation for those at the
picking and sorting end of the cycle, due to the
availability of better employment opportunities.
The challenge for the regulatory systems found
in the developed countries and regions is to
ensure that all the links in the cycle from house-
hold to glass producer are in balance in terms of
the flows of material through the system.
5. CONCLUSION
The core challenge for environmentally and
cost-effective recycling of container glass arises
from the dispersed nature of its sources, princi-
pally households, and the consequent need for
an environmentally and cost-effective infra-
structure providing for its colour separation,
collection, and transportation to processors to
produce furnace ready feedstock. In assessing
the scope for increasing the amount of glass
recycled, there is an overall need to quantify
the resultant energy and other environmental
burdens to allow valid comparisons to be
made with the burdens of using virgin feed-
stock. Nevertheless, based on the data in Table
11.8, overall significant environmental and cost
benefits can result from substituting cullet for
virgin feedstock in container glass production.
Assuming a global glass container recycling
rate in the region of 30%, there is a huge poten-
tial for energy savings and a resultant reduction
in carbon emissions by increasing the propor-
tion of PCW sourced cullet used in container
 REFERENCES
production. Based on the 2007 figure of 72

106 t of container glass produced globally and
assuming an overall 50% thermal efficiency in
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in about 54
106 GJ of energy saved per annum
compared with the energy consumed using 30%
cullet. Based on the same assumptions, reduc-
tions in CO2 emissions using the same cullet/
virgin feedstock ratios would be about 8.3

106 t a1. These potential reductions represent
a very strong case for striving to enhance the
proportion of PCW cullet used in container
glass production in the future.
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163
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(Continued)
164 11. GLASS WASTE
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