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Glass
Glass is a very controversial issue for people who remember the days when you took your lemonade bottle back to the shop and got 5c back. New Zealanders feel very strongly that glass should be recycled. Glass is actually a remarkably complex problem.
What are the issues with glass?
In order to cut down on expensive transport costs, bottle companies started making glass bottles lighter. The bottles became so light weight that they break when put through a bottle washing plant. The vast majority of bottles on sale today cannot be reused as they cannot be washed. Beverage companies do not want to return to heavier bottles as the increased cost in freight will make their products more expensive. In addition the bottles have to be transported back empty, which means two transport trips instead of the one trip they make at the moment. For this reason modern bottles are called “one way glass”.
Council has been collecting glass from around the district and stockpiling it at Oamaru Landfill. As transport costs increased this became increasingly expensive and had to cease. The intention was to crush the glass and use it as an aggregate for making roads, or bedding pipes. However it is much cheaper to use virgin aggregate than to crush glass and blend it with road aggregate (you are only allowed 5% of glass in the road mix).
Council is now using this material to aid landscaping and contouring around the Oamaru Landfill site. While this material has not been disposed of in the tip face, landscaping is a low end use of the product and does not reflect the amount of energy and resources used to make the glass in the first place.
So What's Happening Now?
Council has been working with the Resource Recovery Park, the Glass Packaging Forum and the glass recycling company OI in Auckland to come up with a long term solution for the glass. With this solution the glass is partially crushed to reduce the volume requiring transportation. The glass is transported back to Auckland where it is melted down and recycled back into glass bottles. The Waitaki District is one of the few places in New Zealand where it is possible to recycle glass back into glass. The Glass Packaging Forum has agreed to pay for some of the capital costs to set the process up, and OI have agreed to pay all of the transport costs from Oamaru to Auckland. This agreement is a great win for our community. |