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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”.
A number of Councils set up a glass collection system where the glass is collected in different colours and it was then sent back to the glass maker where the glass was melted down and reused. However this has a number of issues with it.
- Melting glass down for reuse uses high amounts of energy.
- People who create the glass, i.e the beverage producers and also the people who consume the beverages (who create glass by demand) do not pay their fair share of the costs. The ratepayer through the Council picks up most of the costs involved.
- There is no glass recycling plant in the South Island, the nearest plant is in Auckland: So the transport charges are huge.
- Small amounts of contamination make glass unsuitable for recycling. A half cup of sand/dust/grit in a shipping container of glass is sufficient for the load to be rejected. Waitaki District Council previously paid for a container of glass to be transported to Auckland only to have it rejected because of contamination. The glass had to be landfilled at Auckland prices.
So why can’t glass go in the landfill?
There is no valid reason why glass cannot be safely landfilled. It is in essence sand. It is inert, does not generate landfill gas, does not generate leachate, does not cause odours, and does not pollute groundwater. However the New Zealanders feel Councils should be recycling glass as we have been brought up with this culture.
So what can we do with it?
Council currently collects glass from around the district and stockpiles it at Oamaru Landfill. As transport costs increase this is becoming increasingly expensive and will in all likelihood have 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). So for the meantime the stockpile continues to grow. If you wish to have any of this glass then please contact Council as we would be only too pleased to help you out.
Council intends to lobby Central Government to introduce Container Deposit Legislation similar to the system that was used when we took the empty lemonade bottle back for our 5c refund. Such a system works well in South Australia. While this in itself will not solve all of the problems associated with transporting heavy glass around and recycling it, it will mean that the costs will lie with the people who produce the bottles in the first place, rather than Council, and it is these people who are best positioned to come up with innovative solutions rather than Council who can only consider end of pipe solutions. |