In the face of growing environmental crises, public health challenges and economic turbulence, one aspect of our future is clear: glass packaging. With a history dating back over 5,000 years, glass is one of the oldest and most trusted packaging materials, and one that continues to shape human civilisation, protect the environment and improve people’s lives today.
Glass packaging benefits
Glass means sustainable, innovative, healthy, reusable, and infinitely recyclable packaging – that’s what makes it a true champion of circularity, for policy makers, brands and consumers alike.
Discover some of the credentials that make it such a unique material.
Glass is made from a combination of natural and sustainably sourced materials, namely sand, soda ash, limestone, and recycled glass content, also known as cullet. These materials are melted down in furnaces, and made into new glass containers that are both reusable and infinitely recyclable.
What’s more, glass is a permanent material, meaning that it can be endlessly recycled without loss of its intrinsic properties. Glass is also an inert material that always remains healthy and safe for food grade packaging, no matter how many times it is recycled.
What other elements make up glass packaging?
As FEVE, we represent the European Glass Container Industry, which produces over 80 billion containers every year. We are proud to produce healthy, reusable and infinitely recyclable closed loop packaging. However, there’s more to glass packaging than just the container.
Glass packaging consists of the container and a closure, commonly referred to as a “cap”, which can be made of glass, metal, cork or plastic. The material used for the closure depends on the type of product the packaging holds.
The delivery of everyday commodities wouldn’t be possible without glass packaging. It serves, among other things, to protect, transport, convey information to the consumer through its design, and prevent waste. Thanks to its inherent properties, glass packaging is a strategic driver of the European economy, serving essential sectors like food, beverages and pharmaceuticals, as well as perfumery and cosmetics.
What is glass packaging used for?
The delivery of everyday commodities wouldn’t be possible without glass packaging. It serves, among other things, to protect, transport, convey information to the consumer through its design, and prevent waste. Thanks to its inherent properties, glass packaging is a strategic driver of the European economy, serving essential sectors like food, beverages and pharmaceuticals, as well as perfumery and cosmetics.
Why choose glass packaging?
The benefits of glass packaging are clear: it’s sustainable, being 100% and infinitely recyclable, reusable, and refillable. It’s inert,with no synthetic chemicals, making it safe to store food and drinks in. It’s also a beautiful, iconic material, and consumers love it.
Glass comes from nature
Glass is made from naturally occurring ingredients abundant in nature. The unique alchemy of sand, soda ash, limestone, and recycled glass continue to work its magic to create a wonderful material loved by people over the world. No other material or chemical layers are needed to complete it.
Glass is 100% recyclable and infinitely so
Glass is 100% recyclable and can be recycled endlessly with no loss in quality or purity. Glass recycling is a closed loop system, creating no additional waste or by-products. It is one of the very few examples where the same material can be recycled over and over again without loss of quality.
Glass containers can be reused: they can have up to 50 lives
Glass bottles and jars can also be reused and refilled before being recycled into a new bottle at the end of their lives – making glass the leading reusable option for food and beverage consumers around the world, particularly in local markets. Reusing glass bottles reduces the overall impact and combined with recyclable solutions, it increases the sustainable value of glass many times over.
Glass is good for consumers’ health
Glass is virtually inert and impermeable, making it the most stable of all packaging materials. There is no risk of harmful chemicals getting into the food or drinks that are packed in glass. No additional barriers or additives are needed.
Glass supports a robust EU Circular Economy
The container glass industry services essential EU sectors (including food, beverage, pharmaceutical and cosmetics and perfumery) – not just in domestic markets, but as an enabler for the export of high-end products across the world. Moreover, more than 125,000 people work in the glass packaging value chain across Europe.
By 2050 the container glass industry aims to achieve a major revolution in producing glass that is fit for a circular and climate-neutral economy, in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals – securing the future of the sector and the jobs that depend on it across the value chain.
ABIVIDRO
Brazil
Rua General Jardim, 482 – 16º andar
CEP: 01223-010 Vila Buarque – Brazil
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Glass is made from natural ingredients – making it best for preserving taste and quality. As a tasteless and odourless material with no chemical interaction, glass prevents the transfer.
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Energy efficiency and low carbon technologies in container glass
New furnaces are progressively being rebuilt or adapted with innovative low carbon technologies that are much more energy -efficient than in the past. Our industry reduces energy consumption by making use of waste heat recovery technologies, Organic Rankine Cycles technology, oxy-fuel and other symbiotic technologies, which are bringing significant energy savings. While energy savings can have a positive effect there are also downsides.
New energy management systems and technologies deployed throughout the glass plants are helping to increase energy efficiency.
Waste heat recovery from flue gases, when possible, can bring significant energy savings. They can be used in the batch and/or cullet pre-heaters, where the heat of the flue gases is used to warm the raw materials. Not all plants can install this technology as it requires a lot of space. There is also the risk of having more dust build up inside the regenerators, damaging them quicker and reducing their service life.
Another great way to reduce energy is through the Organic Rankine Cycles technology, with innovative refrigerants, that can also generate power from the heat in the flue gases. This technology has however very long pay-back times and is generally only installed in countries with high electricity prices.
Where appropriate, the use of oxy-fuel furnaces, using pure oxygen with natural gas, linked with cullet pre-heating can be economically viable, and can bring some savings as there is no need to heat the nitrogen in the air. However, the production of oxygen requires electricity and needs to be added to the furnace consumption when calculating the net impact (indirect emissions from power generation).
New technologies are also emerging like the combination of oxyfuel furnaces with methane cracking, where natural gas is injected in the regenerators to produce a syngas which can also reduce the energy consumption and the CO2 emissions.
The reduction in energy use in the container glass sector has been on a steep downward trajectory over almost 100 years and is now reaching its thermodynamic limit.