From: Zeki Mustafa Mailto
From: Zeki Mustafa [mailto:
Sent: Thursday, February 03, 2011 7:08 PM
To: Anita Cosaert; Baudouin Ska; Carlos Mallen Loras; David Pat?; Fernando Santa Olalla Pastor;
Giovanni Serpella; Hans De Belder; Marco Kn?fken; Melinha Pineiro; Mick Keogh; Paulo Roque;
Pierluigi Galli; Pieter Bartels; Raf Vanswartenbrouck; Ulli Ix; Valeriy Borynskyy; Werner Annaert
Subject: RE: Agenda next SC FERVER 09.02.2011 - topic on best practices in glass recycling
Hi all, and thanks Pieter for contacting me about this,
Apologies but I will be on the other side of the world during the next meeting!
In relation to the ‘best practices’ which has been included on the agenda, I would love to be
there to discuss the idea in more detail, but I can summarise the idea as follows:
I believe that Ferver, as the industry expert, should produce a paper (or possibly 2) called ‘best
practices in glass recycling’. This paper should examine 2 areaa:
1)Glass collection systems – here we should do a comprehensive study on different
collection systems e.g. mixed glass from igloos, kerbside comingled with other
recyclable materials, colour sorted from igloos, glass crushed at the producers site etc.
We should look at each collection system, and get real data on the experiences of
collection companies throughout Europe i.e. from our members. We should then
report on data such as the yield from each collection system (for example we know
from our own experience that kerbside collections result in approx. 25% more glass
being collected, but of a much lower quality than bottle bank), the CO2 advantages of
one system over another etc, and the quality of the material collected and ultimately
how much of what is collected gets recycled into new glass. We should then rank all of
our findings to say for example (as I think we will find), that colour sorted glass from
igloos gives the best quality (e.g. as in Ireland), while mixed glass comingled and
treated in a MRF gives the worst quality (e.g. as in UK and Italy) with more of this
material being unrecyclable however it often results in more glass being collected. We
therefore present all of our findings to say which collection system is best and which is
worst, from different viewpoints e.g. environmental, economic etc.
2)Glass processing systems and end markets – again many different processes and uses
for glass exist. Of course Paolo and others will correctly argue that only glass which
goes to remelt to make new bottles is ‘real’ glass recycling. But we should not dismiss
the practice by some members in some countries of using glass in other markets such
as fibre glass insulation etc etc. Some of the countries involved also regard these uses
as recycling, even if for EOW we do not. Some simply crush all the material and use it in
road construction for example. However rather than just to dismiss these uses and say
they are not really recycling, we should look at all of the processes and markets, look at
waste factors, uses and final markets and determine the environmental benefits or
otherwise of each type of system. We can then say definitively for example, that using
glass in glass manufacture saves 350kg of CO2, while using it road construction can
actually cause CO2, and so on for all the different processes and markets.
I believe that such a paper will give governments, municipalities, companies and other
interested parties accurate data from a representative body (Ferver) in order to make
informed decisions about what types of glass collection and processing systems they will
support and encourage and which they will not and allow those of us that operate the ‘best’
systems to legitimiately claim that we are best in the class.
I welcome your comments and suggestions.
Regards,
Zeki Mustafa
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