Environment

Brand owners, bottle-makers, retailers and trade associations have joined a new project that aims to take 20,000 tonnes of glass out of the UK waste stream by March 2008.

The GlassRite Beer, Cider and Spirits project, backed by the Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP), brings together well-known names such as Scottish & Newcastle, Anheuser-Busch, Coors UK and SAB Miller.

Supermarket chain Morrisons has also joined the project – which is led by Glass Technology Services (GTS) – together with all of the UK’s major glass packaging manufacturers and a number of trade associations.

GTS project manager Gordon Watts said: “The high level of enthusiasm for this project is extremely encouraging, and we look forward to converting lightweighting aspirations into reality.”

GlassRite Beer, Cider and Spirits is one of three GlassRite projects aiming to reduce the weight of glass packaging by 60,000 tonnes by 2008. It follows the ContainerLite project in which Adnams reduced the weight of its 500ml beer bottles by 34%.

WRAP project manager Nicola Jenkin said: “If each glass container in the UK was just 10% lighter, we could save 250,000 tonnes of glass per year and reduce carbon emissions by 180,000 tonnes. Alcoholic drinks bottles make up a large proportion of that, so this project has huge potential.”