By Dave Palmer, GGF technical officer.

The year is 1977. The place is a parking lot in Barnsley. The man is Stanley Race, the then president of the Glass Manufacturing Federation.

On 6 June he dropped an empty glass jar into the UK’s founding glass recycling bin. Together with Ron England, Race developed this first of over 50,000 ‘bottle banks’ to be found throughout Britain where its citizens could come to deposit any of their household glass containers to be processed back into more glass containers.

All made possible because glass is an infinitely recyclable material.

Fast forward 45 years and you would be forgiven for thinking that there had been ample time for the flat glass and glazing industry to catch up. While it’s true that flat glass manufacturers are working to increase the recycled content of their products, very little of this is actually post-consumer content, at present somewhere around 1%.

Clearly, we have a flourishing refurbished glazing market, so what is happening to all of this recyclable material? In short, landfill. Since the government classes glass as inert waste it can be disposed of in landfill for as little as £3.15/mt (as a point of comparison general waste is currently £98.60/mt).

Whilst the direct consequences of this to the environment are negligible, indirectly this complete loss of a recyclable material necessitates more raw materials to be extracted and since these require higher temperatures to melt than would cullet, they engender more embodied carbon and result in higher emissions.

So, in 2022 surely we must now have the capability to correct this failing of our industry to capture the valuable material and at the same time work towards our collective Net Zero goals?

The answer is yes, and the blueprint to do so has existed for 20 years and came about from within the industry voluntarily. Enter Vlakglas Recycling Nederland (VRN).

Initially run as an experiment by three Dutch glazing organisations, the trial was so successful it gained formal government approval and was official founded in 2002. In short, a levy of €0.30 is placed upon every m² of insulated glass that is placed upon the Dutch market (either through local production or import), with this fee being used to finance a not-for-profit organization to oversee all of the activities associated with the collection, recycling and wholesale distribution of the end product.

This product is then purchased by glass manufacturers at a competitive rate and thus the closed loop, or circular economy system, works perfectly. In 2021 alone, VRN collected 90,000 tonnes of waste glass. To date, VRN has collected over 1,400,000 tonnes since its inception.

With our own construction industry in 2021 being three times the size of its Dutch counterpart (£388.5 billion v £129.9 billion), it becomes evident of just what potential there is for systemic change throughout the UK.

Now more than ever, it is time for the UK glazing industry to plant its flag and demonstrate its commitment to sustainability and the environment by doing whatever it can to facilitate the reutilisation of post-consumer glass.

The current pilot scheme in St Helens is a potential starting point, but the success of VRN proves that it can be achieved through innovation and determination and without the need for prior legislation.