Discover the circular story of glass packaging. Follow us through the journey your glass packaging takes from your home to back on the shop shelf in this educational inside the factory tour.
Have you ever wondered where glass containers come from what they made of and what happens to them when you finish with them well let me and British glass show you glass has been around for thousands of years dating back to the stone ages and the recipe hasn’t changed that much
In that amount of time although the production has today the UK produces over 8 billion glass containers that’s the equivalent of 119 bottles or jars for each person and we’re going to find out How It’s Made and how important it is to recycle it I’m here today at ener
Home of the largest container glass furnace in the world to see what goes into making one of these this factory makes more than 2 billion glass containers a year and is the only glass plant in the world with its own Filling Station we’re going to find out the
Benefits of glass why recycling is so important and how they’re reducing their carbon Footprint hi John so can you tell us a little bit about what you do here at inir yes sure I’m the plan director for El and glass I’ve been here for three and a half years and I look after the glass operations amazing so it’s a fabulous facility can you tell us a
Little bit about the process that you do in this in this section yeah sure well we’re in this is the nerve sentor of the glass plant to be honest this is the bachy furnace control room so this is where we control the furnace technology and also the recipe that is Inc coming
Into the batch that feeds the furnaces that melts to make the glass so a real critical part of the operation you can see here we’ve got the banker screens controlling all our condition monitoring of the glass temperature itself also water temperatures around the site water levels around the side everything that
We need to make glass safely and effectively is controlled from in here you can see the cameras on the screens there that are showing the actual inside of the Furnace we’ve got amazing cameras that can withstand the heat in there and that shows the glass moving forward and
The batch slowly melting as we go through in terms of recycling then a facility like this how much recycled material do you actually use it’s a good question it’s really really important for us so on the one hand from a sustainability and environmental point of view it’s critical for us to increase
Our recycled glass content but actually it reduces the energy we we require to melt the glass to reform it so it’s beneficial to it as well however we are restricted the amount we can get from a supply point of view sometimes from a quality point of view so at the moment
For example on our Amber furnace we’re putting around 60% recycled glass into the recipe and on our Flint our clear glass we’re ejecting 37% Rec Rec glass so an average of probably around about 45% recycled glass as a whole fantastic to find out where ener get some of its
Recycled glass from to use in their furnace we’re heading to beatson Clark here at beatson they process 42,000 tons of glass each year that then gets recycled and made into new bottles and jars and we’re going to check out the Process So I’ve been hearing this word col it a lot is an is that what we’re looking at here so no this is the waste glass that gets delivered to site it’s also got other household waste mixed in before it gets reprocessed in the site it gets all
The contaminants removed so we can have good quality color it to use to be remelted for the packaging in the furnaces so can you tell us a little bit about the Sorting process and how we get from this to the collect yeah so waste glass gets delivered from various
Curbside bottle Banks and Hospitality trade on site we get check it then to make sure it’s of suitable quality and then it gets loaded into the main Hopper via the JCB T Handler and then gets run through the plant it goes to a series of magnets which takes away all the metals
The plastic and paper gets taken from a picking belt and through an extraction system it then runs through the Shaker Beds which sorts it by side eyes and then goes through our balance Optical sorters they’ve got a light source a mirror and a camera and they go over in
The waterfall effect over the light source and the camera reads it so the green and the Amber go straight through the Flint is positively rejected as is the waste product the Flint goes into one side the green and am to another and the CSP waste product go into another
Shoot they all go down the final product into the stillages they get quality checked every hour and then when they good quality to get used back up in the furnaces so how long does this process take to get from this what we see here to the color so it takes approximately 8
To 10 minutes to get loaded into the hopper to run around the plant to then be in the final product stillages uh those stillages then get emptied into the skips and once we’ve got a skip full then it goes up to the furnes to be used wow that’s really fast by using culet
Produced from recycled glass like the colet made here at beatson it means less raw materials are used in the furnace to make new glass bottles and jars to give you an idea of how much it helps for every 10% of color used in the furnace
We see a 5% reduction in CO2 and a 3% reduction in energy consumption all the glass that comes into beatson can be recycled over and over again meaning it can come through the plant a limitless number of times here in the UK it’s actually possible to achieve a closed
Loop economy of glass but we all need to do our parts and recycle our glass properly so places like beatson can create more color to go around the recycling Loop forever so we don’t have to rely on any virgin materials the more we recycle the more color we can use in the
Process let’s head back over to ener to show you how the new bottles and jars are made from the recycled glass all the ingredients to produce glass including the color are Blended together and then fed into the furnaces the glass mixes are then sent to a number of different
Lines depending on their type and color this glass then forms what’s called gobs and is cut to size depending on the container this then goes into the forming machines that forms the final shape of the bottle in a blow mold they’re then conditioned to get the final chemical characteristics of the glass Correct after which they’re inspected to make sure there are no defects before the freshly made bottles are sent to the filling hole where some of them are filled with wine beer or spirits that have been brought into the factory ready for distribution to be transported all over the UK so why might these Brands choose glass over say plastic glass still wins in many factors in terms of when it comes to choosing a bottle so when consumers are asked they always choose glass for Quality you’ll often find premium products such as Wine and Spirits in particular in glass the glass
Is a material this is where it comes into its own so glass is the only material that’s inert chemically inert so it won’t interact with the uh the food or beverage inside so if you get a soft drink for example and you drink it from a plastic bottle you’ll notice that
The taste can be a little bit different a little bit off and that’s because the the material the chemicals from the layer from the plastic liner is interacting with what’s inside the material so with glass it never interacts it’s the only only mainstream packaging that doesn’t change the taste
So for that is the best for health as well and I’d say it’s best for recyclability and best for that being that infinite material that goes around the recycling material chain again and again and again the issue with glass is our carbon intensity so that’s the only Factor when
When compared against a tin can or a plastic bottle but we do fall down a little bit so what we need to do is decarbonize our furnaces which there’s lots of work going happening in the UK right now so in the future we think we can create zero carbon glass bottles
Which will remove that last factor that goes against glass in terms of sustainability Innovation is a continuous process to make glass as sustainable as possible both in the production and the design for example glass is 40% lighter now than it was 20 years ago meaning less weight in transit
And therefore less strain on the environment and factories like ener are constantly looking for new ways to reduce their carbon footprint to produce this amazing material we all just need to make sure we do our part and recycle our glass containers correctly now you know how glass gets
From your house to the shop floor in less than 30 Days