The Positive Impact of Recycling Glass Bottles

Many consumers that want to live “green” have realized that glass containers are more conducive to good health than any other kind of packaging. Many states also see the benefits of recycling glass bottles, so laws were passed to make the consumer pay a deposit on beverage bottles. The deposit will be refunded when the consumer turns the bottles to the recycling center. Recycling glass bottles saves the environment form being cluttered with glass bottles and jars. Glass does not ever return to the earth as the sand, silica and ash it was made from, so we have to be concerned with where the glass goes.

Because we are a throw away society, if we did not recycle the earth would be cluttered with used bottles and jars. The landfills would be overflowing with glass. Thanks to individuals concerned with the environment we more people thinking green and doing their part of keep their part of the environment clean. The deposit charged on your bottle of soda pop is the incentive that you will do the right thing and recycle the bottle when the beverage is gone.

Not only is recycling glass bottles the right thing to do for the environment, it also leads to profit for the city you live in. Recycling glass bottles is everyone's job. Not only does this practice of recycling save the environment from being cluttered, but it saves the environment from being stripped of its natural resources. It takes energy to turn sand into glass. It takes much more energy to create glass from raw materials than it does to make glass from cullet. When glass is made from scratch the greenhouse gas emissions emitted from the burning of fossil fuels is astronomical. If you picture what the pollution would look like with a city full of cars, and then picture the whole nation recycling the way they should, it would be like taking 20,000 cars off the road.

When recycling glass bottles, the bottles go through a crusher which breaks the glass into small pieces, and those pieces are called cullet. Each year over $1 million is generated through the sale of cullet and glass aggregate, which is small pea sized granules of glass that has been pulverized from whole glass or glass cullet.

Recycled glass is even hitting the textile and fashion industry. From October 2007 to January 2008 the Albuquerque International Airport featured a fashion exhibit called Recycle Runway. Making fabrics from a sustainable source like glass is becoming popular. There are so many uses for recycled glass, so the next time you are recycling glass bottles you can be assured that your glass will be recycled into a sustainable product.