Glass recycling in Western Europe, particularly glass packaging, is judged to have been extremely successful. Opinion polls taken in five countries: Austria, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and the UK have shown the extent to which people are prepared to cooperate in schemes to recycle glass. The percentages of the population normally taking their glass packaging to the bottle bank for each of these five countries being reported as 93%, 94%, 76%, 62% and 53% respectively. The population studied did not consider the additional trouble involved in recycling glass as particularly irksome. Factors and circumstances affecting a country's willingness to recycle glass appeared to include: density/dispersion population; availability of banks for the selective collection of glass; start-up of glass recycling, and environmental awareness concerning problems associated with waste.
