Glass kombucha bottles are an item that I often find myself throwing into the recycling bin. For the purpose of this assignment I’ll be talking about glass in general. Glass is surprisingly easy material to produce. There are several different materials used to make it, but it is mostly made from glass sand, calcium carbonate, and sodium carbonate. Once the materials are mixed together they are heated at 3,090 degrees after it is molten glass. Then the glass is molded into its desired shape. The process is obviously more complicated than that, but it does follow mixing, melting, and molding. Glass has been around for thousands of years and is a very environmentally friendly material. It doesn’t release any toxic chemicals over time like plastic. Once it is recycled the process is actually quite similar to producing it, it is just melted and mixed in with other glass to make more products. In fact about ⅓ of all glass products are made from glass that has already been recycled. The downsides are that a glass furnace can not be turned off over its 15 – 18 year lifespan of use and does produce some amount of carbon dioxide. That is the negative environmental impact of glass. From what I can tell I think we should have nearly enough glass already made so that we don’t have to keep making more of it. If every single glass item was sent back to places that could remold it the usage would/is indefinite never really an expiration date. Glass by nature is not and can not be a single use item, which I believe is a reason for it being so sustainable. Even if glass is colored it is still 100% recyclable. On average around 13 million jars made of glass are recycled and 30 days for a glass to go from recycling bin to shelved product.
- Sources
https://www.aaa-glass.com/how-to-make-glass/
