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Because it meets consumers’ needs while conserving natural resources for future generations, glass recycling is clearly a form of sustainable development. A process for the future, glass recycling is nonetheless firmly anchored in the past: European countries have been recycling glass for around 30 years, and the practice of sort-at-source has become part of our everyday life.
The only fully and infinitely recyclable packaging material, glass has intrinsic qualities making it a very environmentally-sound product. Fully recyclable means that a used bottle can be used to make a new bottle; infinitely means endless glass recycling in which nothing, quantitatively or qualitatively, is lost. Combined with its other properties, “recyclability” is clearly one of the definers of the material glass.
The use of cullet within Saint-Gobain’s environmental approach is steadily increasing.
Glassmakers’ main raw material, cullet - glass from sort-at-source collection and recycled as one of the components in new glass - can represent up to 95% of the raw material used.
What are the ecological advantages of glass recycling?
The use of cullet in the manufacture of glass has major ecological advantages. It:
  • Saves energy, as the glass collected melts at a lower temperature than the original raw materials, and more easily and faster.
  • Limits CO2 emissions in the air: each metric ton of cullet used cuts CO2 emissions by around 250 kg.
  • Reduces the extraction of natural resources, (silica sand, limestone and soda) used to make glass, as the cullet is used in their place, and
  • Reduces the volume of waste and enables recovery of a maximum amount of household solid waste by avoiding the incineration or landfilling of used glass.
Packaging quality: uncompromising
While glass packaging allows the product to be seen, its main function is the product’s conservation. The resultant demand for irreproachable quality applies equally to new or recycled glass, if not more so to the latter. The higher the percentage of cullet used, the lower the tolerance of acceptable impurities. This explains the importance placed on processing, a major step in the recycling process at the end of which the glass, sorted, cleaned of impurities and ground, becomes clean cullet, ready to be used to manufacture new glass.
Saint-Gobain has made recycling one of the cornerstones of its environmental policy. The Company has invested in industrial processing centers, and the development of glass processing expertise.Most of Saint-Gobain Packaging’s plants provide an outlet for household cullet, and also recycle all their own production waste.
All these initiatives are a clear response to the increasing expectations placed on the good corporate citizen, henceforth fully committed to an economic and ecological approach to recycling, and to the very important issue of sustainable development that concerns us all.
Recycled glass to the consumer: an ecological chain
1  The consumer disposes of waste glass in collection containers or bins.
2  The glass is collected and hauled to processing centers.
3  The glass is sorted, cleaned of impurities, and ground into cullet (waste glass).
4  After being delivered to glassmaking plants, the cullet is melted to produce new glass bottles, jars, etc.
5  The glass packaging is filled in bottling plants.
6  Released back into the distribution network, the bottles pass through shops back to the consumer.
Links :
In Europe : www.feve.org
In the United States : www.gpi.org