Manufacturers are looking to more environmentally responsible bottles, such as these from Verallia's "Eco" series, which are made using recycled glass.
Between all of the Christmas parties, family get-togethers, and New Year’s celebrations coming up in the next few weeks, Americans can expect to drink almost 30% more than usual this December. That translates into a lot of empty bottles heading into the trash during clean-up. Eco-conscious revelers can rest easy knowing that many of those same bottles (which will hopefully get recycled and not sent to a landfill at the end of the night) had been made using recycled glass. Glass manufacturers such as Verallia “re-gift” all year by producing more and more wine bottles out of cullet, crushed recycled glass to save energy (and improve their own bottom line in the process).
Verallia, a Saint-Gobain brand that manufactures glass bottles and jars for the food and beverage industries, has invested $20 million in the last 18 months to renovate its South Seattle plant, one of thirteen Verallia plants in the U.S. Improvements include a new mechanized packing system and added energy efficiency from brand-new air compressors. Come January 1st 2011, half of the more than 350 million bottles made annually in the plant will be made from cullet. Thanks to a partnership with eCullet that began early last year, the South Seattle plant receives color-sorted cullet from Canada and the Seattle region that can then be used for wine bottles, benefiting both Verallia and the environment. About a third of the plant’s wine bottles go to wineries in the Pacific Northwest.
Manufacturers using recycled glass enjoy financial and environmental benefits. Recycled glass can be substituted for raw materials ad infinitum without creating any additional by-products or waste. Thus, bottle production requires less energy and raw materials, produces fewer carbon dioxide emissions, and costs less because since the glass has been melted before, it can be melted at a significantly lower temperature. However, getting recycled glass can prove difficult because often it winds up mixed in with other materials and, since it breaks, becomes difficult to separate for use. Increasingly, glass manufacturing companies are turning to cullet processors like eCullet to obtain recycled glass.
“The industry is more committed to looking at ways to get quality recycled glass back to glass factories for use in the manufacturing process … Glass companies are now working more closely with the cullet processors and the hauling industry to get more of the material back to the glass factory,” said Joe Cattaneo, president of the Glass Packaging Institute.
Verallia’s commitment to the environment has been recognized by the Environmental Protection Agency, which has designated the manufacturer an ENERGY STAR Partner of the Year for the past two years.
—Grace Duggan