GLASS INGREDIENTS
A cookbook of Glass Recipes
Container Glass
Ingredients:
Silica Sand 60%
Soda Ash 20%
Limestone 15%
Alumina-Silicate 4%
Salt Cake 0.9%
Minor Ingredients 0.1%
Directions:
Preheat oven to 1500°C. Weigh out ingredients. Mix them with cullet (recycled glass). Pour mixture into the oven (furnace). Once the mixture has melted, transfer to a refiner for further heating. Flow the melted glass through a fore hearth and cut into sections for forming. Pour the glass globs into metal moulds and place in an oven. When stress areas are removed from the glass, remove from the oven. Cool, and fill the moulded glass with desired filling. Put a lid on the container and ship or use as required!
Does it really conserve energy if I recycle my container glass?
Recycling one glass container saves enough energy to keep a 100 watt light bulb burning for 4 hours. Producing glass from recycled glass uses less energy than preparing glass from raw materials.
How much raw material is saved due to glass recycling?
1.2 tonnes of raw material (sand, limestone, soda ash) is saved when one tonne of glass is recycled.
Is it true that glass biodegrades or decomposes?
NO!!!
It is absolutely amazing how many people get this wrong! Biodegradation and decomposition are biological processes. Glass is abiotic. It will not compost! Abiotic means that glass is not a "living being" whereas "biotic" refers to plants and animals. Glass does eventually break-down, but it takes about 1 million years for a single glass bottle to break down. Glass is only broken down by weathering and physical crushing or pounding.
Do labels and lids need to be removed before glass is recycled?
CWM Environmental do not require the removal of labels or lids. We collect your mixed glass containers and forward them on for reprocessing. The recycling processing equipment is sophisticated and labels and lids come off when the container glass is readied for the furnace.
Why is it important to clean glass before it gets recycled?
Food or juice left in any container can attract pests: flies, bees, wasps, cats, rats and dogs, but not elephants, at least not in Carmarthenshire. Would you like it if you had to deal with an angry wasp when you tried to pick up a glass bottle? Not likely. Rinsing out any container, glass, plastic or metal is a health and safety issue for those who are involved in handling containers between the disposal point and the reprocessing manufacturers. There are a lot of people who are allergic to bees too, maybe even you!
Recycling Glass
Follow the path of your recycled container glass:
Mixed Glass is delivered to CWM Environmental Facilities, where it is bulked up and transported for its onward journey for reprocessing.
At the Re-Processing Manufacturer
Glass is sorted according to colour green, flint and amber. The glass is cleaned and prepared for the furnace.
Glass through magnets to remove metal contaminants
Glass is filtered to remove small particles and pass it through a density separator
to remove lighter plastics and aluminium
Glass is then crushed
Crushed glass bits are put through more magnets and some air to get rid of any left-over plastic, metal or other contaminants
The pure glass bits are called cullet. The processor ships this raw material to one of the glass furnaces. The cullet can be mixed with pure ingredients to make new container glass. The cullet can be used to produce new container glass, fibreglass and glass beads (which is the reflective component in road paint), or it can be used in road construction and for other aggregate uses.
