News

There's good news and bad news down at the tip. The good news is that in the wake of the swing away from the voluntary bring-bank system to kerbside collection schemes, more used glass is being recovered than ever before: about 1.56m tonnes last year. The bad news is that because it all tends to be lumped together irrespective of colour during the recycling process, more than 40% of it is only fit for aggregate used to shore up the nation's road network.

During 2007, the glass packaging sector experienced its first dip in the return of usable cullet for many years: a shortfall of 50,000 tonnes. In directly impacting upon production schedules, many in the industry fear this could evolve into a steadily worsening gap between supply and demand.

Glass manufacturers would customarily expect to achieve a mix of 50% virgin material and 50% recyclate. According to Allied Glass sales and marketing director Phil Morris, the cullet level is now more likely to be less than one third. Cullet in general – and white flint for clear glass in particular – is a major issue for the industry.

There’s contamination in collection, and availability within the waste recovery stream is low. We’re under pressure from the aggregate users, who’ll basically take as much unseparated as they can get and will pay the same price that we do for processed cullet, says Morris.

The knock-on effect is that we have to use more energy as we’re melting more raw material. That will inevitably be reflected in the pricing when we get down to the annual or half-yearly negotiations with customers, he adds. As a result, Allied has chosen to increase its focus on higher quality clear glass for super-premium products, which is made without recycled cullet.

Kerbside critique
The root of the problem lies at the kerbside itself, where there is no perceived incentive for sorting glass into separate colours as it had been under the bring-bank system. Instead, the bulk of recyclable glass is lumped together along with alien debris and sent to a materials recovery facility (MRF).

Local authority targets for recycling collections are based on the weight rather than the quality of the recyclate. British Glass’s recycling manager Rebecca Cocking says: They have targets to meet and budget constraints under which to operate. However, quality is clearly considered to be someone else’s problem.

Personally, I would put in more bring-bank facilities. These were scaled back because the yield from the consumer wasn’t as great as kerbside, but the system works very well in Europe where there seems to be no objection to facilities located within residential areas.

Beatson Clark managing director Alan Jones insists: There are extremely elegant systems in operation abroad for getting streamed used glass back into the process – often supermarket led – and yet in the UK we just keep thrashing about and apparently not understanding how to sort it out. Local authorities typically see waste as a problem; if they can get someone to throw unsorted glass into a road they’re fulfilling their obligation as they see it.

The problem is exacerbated by the fact the UK imports large quantities of green glass, in the form of wine bottles, and exports clear glass in the form of spirits and premium beverages. Wrap’s ongoing Glassrite project is already demonstrating how bulk importation of wine can have a positive impact on surplus volumes of green glass in the waste stream. Meanwhile, it’s estimated we’re exporting 270,000 tonnes per year of mostly green recyclate (20% of the total volume recovered).

The basic recycling facts are that every 1,000 tonnes of cullet used to make new glass saves 345,000kwh of energy, 314,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide, 1,200 tonnes of raw material and 1,000 tonnes of landfill. On top of that, it can be used again and again without any loss in quality.

Securing cullet
Beatson Clark has looked at importing white flint cullet from Scandinavia, but discounted it on the grounds of high transportation costs and inability to offset against Packaging Recovery Note (PRN) requirements. With its pan-European spread, O-I is better placed to realise this as an option and has recently secured a licence under packaging regulations to export waste. Underpinning its ongoing supply of usable cullet, however, has been establishing a positive contractual relationship with a number of local authorities and waste collection companies, says environment, energy and risk manager Tim Neal.

O-I has managed to maintain its cullet percentages at the same level for the past three years, largely because it has entered into long-term cullet colour-separated contracts to support an overall production of around 500,000 tonnes per year through its two UK sites. Cullet represents upwards of 85% of O-I’s green glass, and 40% and 50% of its white flint and amber output respectively.

This strategy is seeing us through in the short term, but unless the standard of kerbside collection improves then we’re likely to experience the same problems as our competitors when it next comes to renegotiating contracts, says Neal.

Positioned between the MRF and a material’s final destination, be it furnace or road fill, are glass recycling specialists, the largest being Berryman.

End-user customers for co-mingled cullet now account for 20% of Berryman’s total revenue. Two years ago, that was closer to 10%, and general manager Mick Keogh doesn’t see the trend being reversed. Collection is normally the most expensive part of the operation. The bigger waste management companies will obviously want to scale that cost down as far as possible. For most other forms of scrap, the price is going up – but glass competes with a relatively cheap virgin raw material so the price of recyclate is fairly well pegged to that.

The problem is that the value of a PRN is exactly the same if the material goes into aggregate as it is for re-melt. Also, in putting it into the re-melt sector there’s more transport involved; a lot of the industry is based up north, whereas most of the waste glass is sourced from the South-East. There’s generally an aggregate plant close to where glass is collected and the processing is negligible: it’s crushing and screening.

An upcoming Wrap initiative is aimed squarely at improving quality standards in recycling post-kerbside. In addition to stressing the carbon emissions benefits to be accrued through routeing non-contaminated cullet back into the glass manufacturing chain, Wrap is also able to identify direct cost benefits to local authorities, including higher payment rates for colour-sorted cullet, plus the elimination of MRF ‘gate fees’ of £28-45 a tonne for which co-mingled schemes are liable.

MADE THERE, BOTTLED HERE
Waitrose was forced to pack a rosé wine in green rather than clear glass bottles in March. According to Waitrose wine buyer Nick Room, it was caused by the unwillingness of the French glass manufacturer to meet a relatively short order lead-time, due to insufficient additional overall demand for clear glass to justify disrupting production.

The rosé was part of the multiple’s Vin a Deux range of 500ml bottles. It’s too early to say whether the green glass has impacted negatively on sales as we don’t have another line with which to compare it. The problem has been further compounded by the fact there’s now a Provence rosé coming into the assortment, so we’ll have that in clear glass, says Room. However, I suspect that sales might increase by 10-15% when the original rosé switches across. While Waitrose didn’t consider any other packaging format due to reasons of brand conformity, Room concedes that consumer research is in train and certain launches are being looked at around PET at the moment.

In the meantime, Waitrose’s predicament could possibly have been resolved through bottling at market rather than at source: the proposition being explored via Wrap’s ongoing Glassrite project, which has already achieved an increased UK production of 79 million bottles through bulk importation of wine and ramped up the annual volume of recycled glass by 24,000 tonnes.

LITTLE SMASHER
The appropriately named Smash & Grab Glass Recycling Company has come up with a practical disposal system for food service outlets operating throughout London and adjacent suburbs. Slightly smaller than a domestic dishwasher, the ‘Little Smasher’ will reduce up to 20 bottles to cullet in just six seconds and, says managing director Geoffrey Galitzine, can slash onwards waste collection requirements by over 75%.

The machine costs £1,400, but can be leased as part of a full service agreement including rental, maintenance and collection of waste on terms subject to volumes and rate of usage. Whereas other waste specialists operate a one-size-fits-all schedule geared to a fixed timetable of collections irrespective of volume, ours is tailored to individual requirements. The more 250-litre bins you use for storage, the less you pay for their disposal.

Smash & Grab already services more than 160 outlets, and with around 130,000 restaurants and pubs across
England and Wales alone there is plenty of potential for expansion.

The one downside is that with no means of colour sorting, the resultant cullet goes straight to road fill: currently, around 1,500 tonnes per year. The government and the various recycling agencies are pushing very hard to encourage segregation between different coloured glass, but it’s not going to happen within any hospitality outfit; they don’t have the time or room, says Galitzine.