One of the pioneers of glass recycling in the UK has written to environment minister Ben Bradshaw concerned at the hundreds of thousands of tonnes of recyclable glass being shipped abroad. Ron Cook, one of the leading lights in the launch of the very first bottle bank programme in the UK in the 1970s said the direction of glass recycling in the UK was now "tragically off-course." As the government moves to cut carbon emissions in the fight against climate change, Mr Cook expressed his frustration at the potential energy savings being lost by shipping waste glass abroad. "I learned that in the 3rd quarter of 2006, 57,000 tonnes of waste glass collected in the UK were exported, almost given away, instead of being recycled in the UK. In a year that amounts to 200,000/t, meaning 2m gallons of oil that could have been saved in the UK, not to mention the raw materials," he said.
