What Not to Recycle

Good Practise Recycling

Consumers should not put glass bowls, cups, dishes or jugs into their glass recycling point or their doorstep collection. They should also not recycle light bulbs, window panes or electronic equipment with their bottles and jars. Following this advice helps the industry use more recycled glass, save more energy and reduce emissions and waste.

Glass Oven Ware

We are all familiar with glass in the form of bowls, jugs and casserole dishes better known under the trade name Pyrex_® or Vision Ware_®.

These items are made from a different type of glass to normal bottles and jars called Borosilicate glass. Around 10% boric oxide is added to the basic glass raw materials enabling the glass to withstand very high temperatures and rapid changes from hot to cold.

If consumers recycle these items with their glass bottles and jars it will become broken and mixed in with the other glass where it is visually impossible to tell the difference.

Borosilicate glass does not fully melt in the furnaces used to make glass for bottles and jars and so gets into the finished containers as small hard pieces called “stones”. These “stones” form weaknesses in the bottles and jars which can lead to them breaking. In the factories making containers there is a range of inspection equipment which checks every single bottle or jar made and detects the “stones”, stopping them going out to be filled with food or drinks.

If the factories making glass bottles and jars find lots of “stones” in containers they have to reduce the amount of recycled glass they are using until the problem stops.

Electronic Glass

Light bulbs and other electronic equipment which have glass components contain many metal elements and a range of heavy metals such as lead and cadmium and should be disposed of by specialist companies.

If the public use recycling points for these items it creates quality problems for glass manufacturers and reprocessors in all markets.