Glass

Most glass containers can be recycled: wine and beer bottles, jam and sauce jars, coffee jars, olive oil bottles and medicine bottles, for example.

Glass bottles and jars come in three main colours; green, brown, and clear, which can all be recycled. If the glass colour is hidden by labelling you can check the colour by looking at the top or the base of the jar or bottle. Blue glass bottles can be put in the green glass bottle bank for recycling.

How to recycle glass

• Empty bottles and jars and rinse them out so they are clean for storage and ready for recycling. You don't need to remove the labels

• Remove lids, plastic caps or corks

• Put your bottles and jars in your collection box/bag/bin for recycling or take them to your nearest bottle bank. Make sure you select the right bank for each glass colour.

Glass that you can't recycle

• mirrors

• Pyrex or other cookware such as 'Visionware'

• light bulbs

• window glass

• wine and drinking glasses

• broken glass

How glass is recycled

When glass recycling banks are emptied the glass is sold to a reprocessor or glass maker. It is monitored for purity, contaminants are taken out, and it is crushed. This crushed glass is called 'cullet'. It may then be added to the mixture in a furnace for making new glass products, or it may be sold for another use such as a road surfacing material.

Did you know?

• The first bottle banks appeared in 1977. There are now over 50,000 sites around the UK.

• On average, every family in the UK uses around 330 glass bottles and jars each year. However, only recycle 30 per cent of these are recycled

• Glass is 100% recyclable and can be endlessly recycled with no loss in quality.

(Facts from Britglass)