If you are you wondering what happens to glass bottles once you have thrown it into the recycling bin, here are three stages to what happens to the glass once collected.

The glass is transported to a materials recycling facility or glass recycling and treatment plant where the glass is sorted by colour, this is because different chemicals need to be added to different coloured waste glass to produce recycled glass of the desired colour.

Once they are sorted by colour, the glass then undergoes a number of processes to remove contamination from the cullet, large metallic objects such steel cans and bottle caps are removed with magnets before the material passes into enclosed chambers where blown air is used to remove large lightweight objects such as paper, plastic bottles, and plastic jar lids or picked up manually.

Once the contamination is removed from the cullet, the recycled glass has to undergo glass decolorizing in the glass recycle process, followed by dyeing. In order to do this the material is fed into a vertical dryer, which draws air up though the cullet as it enters the dryer, this flow of hot air will remove the moisture from the cullet as well as glass dust and paper labels which have been freed from the bottles and jars. If the bottles are coloured, the decolorizing process will include oxidizing the melted glass cullet. Some of the most commonly used colouring agents for dyeing of recycled glass include borax, potassium permanganate, zinc oxide, erbium oxide, cobalt carbonate, neodymium oxide, and titanium dioxide.

Once the cullet is free from contamination and separated by the machines into the 3 main colours which are clear, brown & green. The glass is then moulded into the various products and sizes before it is sampled and tested to ensure that it meets the required specifications.

The process of recycling glass is known as closed loop system, as the waste material is turned back into its original form and as this is the case of glass bottles and jars, this loop can be repeated over and over again in the same process.

London City Waste Clearance can help with all your recycling and waste collection in Walthamstow as well as the rest of London! Call us or use the form on the right for a free no obligations quote.