Recycled glass is valuable for glass manufacturers. It’s one of the four main ingredients in creating new glass bottles and jars. O-I Glass aspires to make glass recycling available in 100 percent of the communities where the company operates. O-I is getting creative to build glass recycling programs to support communities, and Glass4Good™ has been one of the most successful programs.
“Glass is a very unique material,” said Bob Hippert, Sustainability Strategy Leader at O-I. “It’s 100 percent recyclable, it’s infinitely recyclable, and you can melt it over and over again without losing quality. You can combine it with any recycled content level to create new containers.”
Glass4Good™ generates recycled glass
Among O-I’s corporate sustainability goals is incorporating an average of 50 percent cullet, or recycled glass, in its packages globally by 2030. One of the largest challenges in achieving that goal is the varying availability of cullet for manufacturing. Sometimes communities don’t have the right equipment or the right systems in place to collect glass for recycling.
“We need a lot of cullet, but not all of this cullet is available out there in the market for us to procure, so we want to reach the ecosystem around our plant communities,” said Sammy Holaschutz, Recycling Systems Development Leader at O-I.
Glass4Good™ creates incentives to recycle glass
Through the Glass4Good™ program, O-I incentivizes residents to recycle – O-I makes a charitable donation based on the amount of glass that the community recycles.
“Glass4Good™ gave us an opportunity to give back to our communities while also increasing recycled content for our products and bringing glass recycling to our communities,” said Elizebeth Hupp, Global Social Engagement Leader at O-I.
In the USA, O-I operates Glass4Good™ in four communities in which the company operates – Danville, Virginia, Greeley, Colorado, James City County, Virginia and Jefferson County, Pennsylvania.