By recycling packaging glass, large savings of raw materials and energy are achieved. To produce 1 ton of glass, using glass waste, less is consumed: water – 20 liters, oil – 19 liters, raw materials – 1.5 kg and 42 kWh of electricity. Recycling glass in production also reduces CO2 emissions. Every ton of waste glass used to produce new glass reduces CO2 emissions by 315 kg!
Glass is an excellent material that can be used countless of times and can also be recycled. It can be recycled countless times with less than 1% impurities remaining (ceramics, metals and other inorganic things).
It is best to reuse glass packaging. However, damaged and broken glass packaging must be recycled. In 2012, as many as 25 billion pieces of glass packaging were recycled in the EU. Primarily, the recycling of glass packaging is achieved by separate collection in special containers (green in the Republic of Croatia).
In the Republic of Croatia, the companies responsible for recycling packaging glass are: Unija Nova from Sesvetski Kraljevac and Vetropack Straža from Hum na Sutli.
Unija Nova has been separately collecting and sorting waste glass packaging for more than 30 years. The company Vetropack is the largest regional producer of glass packaging and is very successful at recycling glass cullet.
Unija Nova needs to process the collected glass packaging waste in a high-quality way: separate all impurities (metal caps and screws, remains of ceramics, stones, etc.), completely sort by colour, properly shred the glass parts. Pre-processing produces glass cullet, which is a secondary raw material. On the other hand, Vetropack, as a manufacturer of glass packaging, must regularly and very precisely monitor the quality of glass cullet. Insufficiently cleaned and crushed glass cullet directly endangers the quality and thus the market placement of glass packaging. This is why only the high-quality work of Unija Nova creates the starting conditions for recycling of glass packaging.
Both companies have traditionally recorded exceptionally good business results and are leading in the responsible management of production and consumer waste from glass packaging. In this, the highest levels of quality in the production of new glass packaging with a closed recycling process have been achieved. It is impossible to guarantee quality production without a well-thought system of collecting and sorting separately collected glass waste. The Republic of Croatia is a relatively small country with long transportation distances. This imposes extremely large and complex obligations for the Unija Nova company.
The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it.” – Robert Swan
Glass recycling quotas in Europe in 2012
Separate collection of glass packaging and recycling in the Republic of Croatia has been carried out for more than thirty years. However, Croatia is still at the bottom third among EU countries. Only six EU countries have a lower degree of recycling of glass packaging waste. However, even with a glass recycling quota of 49%, this is a particularly high level of recycling rate in the Republic of Croatia, compared to other waste materials. The most important thing is that the recycling system of waste glass packaging in the Republic of Croatia is constantly expanding and developing and especially in the domain of production waste. Gradually, better results are also being achieved in the recycling of glass packaging in municipal waste:
- 2006 analysis: share of waste glass 6,8% of weight
- 2015 analysis: share of waste glass 3,7% of weight
On the other hand, the share of glass in the municipal waste in the Republic of Croatia has almost halved. Unija Nova company is persistently and constantly increasing the plant capacity and mechanical processing, as well as the number of containers for the separate collection of glass packaging. The capacity was increased to almost 100 tons per day in two shifts. The annual delivered quantity of glass karst has increased to more than 30,000 tons per year.
The results achieved by the Centre for Packaging Waste Management of Unija Nova in cooperation with the Environmental Protection and Energy Efficiency Fund are impressive:
There are more than 130 employees. Four locations outside of Zagreb (Poreč, Šibenik, Dugopolje and Osijek) have been opened. This was necessary due to the long transport distances in the Republic of Croatia.