The rate of remelting glass has dropped to its worst performance since 2004, even though the UK has exceeded glass recycling expectations, hitting the EU Packaging & Packaging Waste Directive targets. Out of the 1,6M/t of glass recycled in the UK, just 665,561/tonnes was returned to UK glass container manufacturers for remelting to be made into fresh glass packaging. However, according to figures from the National Packaging Waste Database, due to an increase of 150,000/t of recycled packaging glass, the UK has actually hit the EU Packaging & Packaging Waste Directive, which aims for 60% of all glass packaging to be recycled. As a result, 1.6M/t glass has been recycled in the past year but the cullet is being diverted away from container manufacturers to be used as building aggregate instead of being remelted.
