Where should you dispose of your broken drinking glass? Does used glass go into the glass container with or without a lid? To which color does blue glass belong? Glass recycling is a good thing, but it can also be confusing. Here are the five most common mistakes.
1st Mistake: disposing of used glass with lids
Screw caps, crown caps and other lids have no business in the bottle bank to begin with. They themselves are recyclable materials that can be recycled and therefore belong in the yellow bag. It is true that modern plants can filter out most of the caps and then recycle them. But this is not entirely loss-free and also increases the energy consumption of the plant. Depending on the location of the glass container, however, you may even be asked to dispose of your used glass with a lid. Some municipalities want to use this measure to prevent wasp infestations or to prevent lids from accumulating around the glass container.
2nd mistake: Disposing of drinking glass
Not all glass is the same. To recycle used glass, it is melted down. For this to work properly, the collected glass needs to have the same melting point. This is the case with old pickle jars, beer bottles or cosmetic jars. Not so with normal drinking glasses, windows or light bulbs. This glass has a higher melting point. Therefore, only used glass that was previously used as packaging for food, beverages or cosmetics should go into the glass container. The rest can be disposed of in the residual waste.
3rd mistake: Rinsing out used glass
Under no circumstances should you dispose of full jars and bottles. This would lead to a blatant mess in the bottle bank. On the other hand, it’s also not a good idea to rinse out used glass before you dispose of it. After all, recycling is all about conserving resources. In the recycling plant, the used glass is cleaned anyway. If you rinse it at home, you waste twice as much energy and water.
Tip: If you want to avoid mold, you can rinse your used glass with old industrial water: for example, with leftover pasta or mop water.
4th mistake: not rinsing out honey jars
With honey from the supermarket, you should rinse out however absolutely the glass, before you dispose it in the glass container. And thoroughly! The reason for this is American foulbrood, which can destroy entire bee colonies.
Tip: Rinse the honey jar with hot milk, so you have something tasty to drink right away!
5th mistake: Ignore the color
Old glass should be turned into new glass again. For this, a clean separation of the old glass according to color is important. Therefore, make sure to throw only white glass to the white glass and brown glass to the brown glass.
But what about used glass whose color cannot be clearly assigned? For example, blue glass? Blue waste glass or waste glass of indeterminate color belongs to the green glass. This is because green glass is the least likely to show up later on whether false colors have been smuggled in.
Glass recycling is an important contribution to environmental protection. With these tips, nothing can go wrong.
