In spite of the best intentions of bar owners & staff, less than 10% of glass bottles in pubs & clubs in Australia are being recycled; the rest goes to landfill. "Pubs were never designed to cope with the large number of empty glass bottles they face today. We used to drink beer & spirits from glasses, now we drink from bottles. At the end of the night, large amounts of empty bottles are disposed of & most of this ends up in landfill," said Ed Cordner, CE, National Packaging Covenant (NPC). "But this won't be the case for much longer, thanks to an Australian first project which started in Melbourne to increase glass recycling rates", he said. With funding by the NPC & the Packaging Stewardship Forum & support from Melbourne City Council, more than 90 hospitality venues are participating in a free, 2M trial to use the BottleCycler machine.
