CORONAVIRUSGLASS
otherwise any impurities will be obvious in the finished product. Apart from food packaging, clear glass is also very often used to make bottles for products such as water, gins and whiskies, which are often exported from the UK.
On the other hand, we import a lot of green glass in products such as wine bottles. Now, green glass is actually the most ecological type of glass because it has an average of 60% recycled content but can be up to 90%. Compare that to the average 30% for clear glass. In addition, it is less important for green or brown cullet to be completely pure than it is for clear cullet.
So yes, supply and demand can vary wildly for the different colours of glass.
There has been a lot in the news lately about Scotland’s proposed deposit return scheme (DRS). Can you clarify British Glass’ position on that?
In a nutshell, we think that glass should be excluded from the DRS. While we absolutely do want to raise the recycling rate of glass, we do have concerns whether this is the right way to achieve that - and this is true both
for the Scottish DRS and the upcoming Westminster one.
I think it’s fair to say that originally the DRS was seen as a way of tackling the problem of plastics, encouraging people to return plastic food and drinks packaging that they consume on the go. However, Germany introduced a similar scheme and there was actually a 60% increase in the consumption of plastic when glass was included in their DRS. You see a similar increase in plastic in other countries such as in Finland and Croatia, so that’s a real concern.
There are two reasons for that. Firstly, the handling fee is likely to be higher for glass because it is simply a heavier and bulkier material. It also means people having to carry heavier bags to the shops to return their glass, which they may be less inclined to do.
The second reason is that in the Scottish
GLASS FEATURE
scheme, there is a flat 20p deposit on every bottle or container, no matter what the size. That is an issue for us because many products with glass packaging can be sold in multipacks. So, for example, if you buy a 6-pack of cider or beer in 500ml bottles, you’ll be paying a £1.20 deposit on top of your product. Whereas a 2-litre plastic bottle would only have the 20p deposit.
This might not sound like much but consider how unstable things are right now. The COVID situation is going to have a massive impact on the whole glass supply chain, and we still have a potential
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