Yorkshire ready for recycling success after securing major invesment

ONE of the world’s major glass packaging companies has signed a 15-year agreement with glass recycling firm Reuse, which will see it plough investment into Yorkshire. 

Ardagh Group has three glass manufacturing plants in Yorkshire (Knottingley, Doncaster and Barnsley), and supplies the world’s leading food and drinks companies. It is partnering with Reuse to increase the volume of furnace ready recycled glass (referred to as cullet in the industry). South Kirkby-based Reuse is a division of the privately owned Australian recycling and waste management company, United Resource Management (URM), which also has three plants in Yorkshire.

The partnership’s first action is a £5m investment in state-of-the-art sorting and separation technology and will be the first in an ongoing programme.

The recycled glass will then be supplied to Ardagh for use in its furnaces to make new bottles and jars.

Ardagh said that the breakthrough with this new technology has already helped it increase the recycled content of the glass bottles and jars that it produces by 12%.

Sharon Crayton, head of marketing at Ardagh Glass, Europe, said: “We have  been  producing green bottles that contain over 90% of recycled glass for many years, but high recycling levels for clear (flint) glass have previously posed  a challenge  due to difficulties in colour separating  clear glass back to a pure enough colour at the required quality specification.

“This new technology has put us at the forefront of UK recycling, helping us to significantly increase the recycled content for clear (flint) bottles and jars.   For example, our Doncaster plant which is focused solely on the production of clear (flint ) glass, achieved an average recycled content level  of  over 50% in the first quarter of 2014 against an average recycling  rate of 32% in the same quarter of 2013.”
 
The new  Reuse glass sorting and separation facilities have capacity for up to 250,000 tonnes of waste glass – approximately 13% of the UK’s steam of waste glass. Most of the glass supplied to these units is collected in the North of England, maximising the local nature of glass recycling and minimising the carbon footprint of modern glass packaging.

Crayton added: “Glass packaging is already a very successful environmental story as bottles can be recycled over and over again, without limit and without losing any of its quality as the most natural and healthy packaging medium.

“The partnership we are announcing enables us to make even more use of the glass that is recycled in homes and businesses throughout Yorkshire and the North of England, helping us to provide our customers with products that meet the very highest recycling levels.

“This is a real win for Yorkshire as well, guaranteeing the future well-being of an industry that is important to the local economy. It also keeps the “cycle” word alive, following hot on the tracks of the highly successful Grand Depart.”

Mark Wilson of Reuse said that with recent changes over the past few years in the way waste glass is collected, moving away from bottle banks to commingled household (kerbside) collections, the main challenge the company faced was to find better ways of separating the glass from  other recyclables, and then re-processing it into quality colour separated cullet.

“This latest investment, the first in an ongoing programme, gives us the technology to produce more finished cullet of the highest standard to meet the growing requirements of Ardagh,” he said.  

 “However, it remains easier and more effective to recycle glass back into glass bottles and jars when glass is collected separately from other packaging materials. We therefore urge councils to consider this when renewing their waste management contracts and to specify that recycled glass goes back into making new glass packaging rather than less sustainable uses such as aggregates.  We are happy to share our knowledge and experience to support the process and help increasing glass recycling rates even further.”

According to data from British Glass, the UK glass packaging industry is worth £890m.