Glass as a packaging material can be used infinitely. Nevertheless, the glass industry is not yet fully circular. There is still potential to be leveraged along the glass value chain to reduce energy and resource use and increase recycling rates.
The advantages are obvious: more circular economy means less raw material use, fewer greenhouse gas emissions and thus more climate and resource protection. Not only can the energy-intensive processes in glass production be optimized, but the consumption of glass packaging can also be reduced through new reusable models.
Decisive approaches to solving this problem could be the reduction of quartz sand versus the increased use of cullet and recyclate. The melting process accounts for up to 85 percent of the energy required in glass production. The use of around ten percent cullet already reduces the required melting energy by around three percent.
