Recycling is everything in today’s single-use world. While your grandmother or, perhaps, great-grandmother made many things from scratch and reused the same set of canning jars over and over, today’s consumer buys something to use until it’s gone and then recycles it.

In 2018, 3.1 million tons of glass containers were recycled. That breaks down to a meager 31.3% recycling rate. What’s going wrong? Why did about 7.6 tons of glass end up in the landfills? Confusion when it comes to glass recycling plays a big role in the lower recycling rates for glass.

To maximize the benefits of glass recycling, it’s important to understand what is and isn’t recyclable. It’s equally important to know the do’s and don’ts of glass recycling and why glass color matters.

Glass Comes in a Rainbow of Colors

Before you can even put the do’s and don’ts of recycling to the test, you need to understand why not all glass jars or containers are recyclable. Glass comes in a myriad of colors, and those colors come from additives to the glass. 

• Clear Glass

Clear glass is one of the most common forms of glass. You can see through it. It’s the type of glass that holds pickles, jam, salad dressings, and pasta sauce. When it’s melted down, it’s made into new glass jars.

Because it’s easy to recycle and reuse clear glass, it’s one of the most popular options. But, it must be sorted together and free from colored or altered glasses like Pyrex. When clear glass mixes with other types, it weakens the structure.

• Brown or Amber Glass

Some beer brands bottle their beer in brown glass. It helps keep the sunlight from altering the taste of the beer, making the beer taste skunky. Sometimes, you’ll find items like cooking oils or hand soaps in brown glass bottles.

Brown glass gets its color from carbon, iron, and sulfur. Because it has those additions, brown glass has to be recycled with other brown glass items. While it could be mixed with clear glass, it will change the color and can’t ever return to its pure brown or clear form.

• Green Glass

Chromium and iron are two of the most common metallic oxides used to give green glass its color. You frequently see green glass used to bottle beer, olive oil, and wine. 

Like brown glass, green glass must be recycled with other green glass items. They cannot be mixed, or it alters the color of future items.

• Blue Glass

Blue glass is less commonly used in consumer products, but it is out there. Blue gets its coloring from cobalt oxide. You might find perfume containers and some liquor bottles made from blue glass.

You can recycle blue glass, but the colored glass needs to be processed with the same colors. If that doesn’t happen, it won’t be as vibrant in recycled glass bottles and containers. 

Those are the common colors, but there are others out there. If you have a recycling company that sorts glass at the facility, recycling those glass items is simple. Put them in your recycling bin, and the sorters and recycling staff take care of the rest. Still, there are some tips to follow to ensure your items are recycled correctly. That’s where the do’s and don’ts come in.

Essential Do’s and Don’ts for Glass Recycling

Sorting colors is just the start to correctly recycling glass. The good news is that in most districts, zero-sort recycling is standard. You’re not responsible for sorting by color, but you still need to do your part to ensure your glass is reused to make new products.

The Do’s:

• Check Your Local Recycling Guide: Read your hauler’s recycling guidelines to ensure you know what you can and cannot recycle. This is especially important if you’ve moved recently, as districts don’t often use the same recycling guidelines. If you’re supposed to sort colors, make sure you do so before putting them out for recycling.
• Remove Caps or Lids: Caps and lids are not made of glass. Because they’re usually metal or plastic, they cannot be recycled with the glass jar or container. Remove them first and recycle them separately if possible, or throw them away if that’s not an option.
• Wash Jars: Quickly wash out jars with hot, soapy water to remove residual foods and oils. It doesn’t have to be completely clean, but most of the contents need to be rinsed out to avoid contamination during the recycling process.

The Don’ts:

• Avoid Recycling Items That Aren’t Bottles or Jars: Most recycling facilities only accept jars and bottles, and they must be glass. Canning jars, drinking glasses, Pyrex, light bulbs, glass plates, windows, mirrors, and bowls are not accepted in recycling streams because they have different chemical compositions.
• Don’t Break the Glass: Breaking the glass is not helpful. It might make extra space in your recycling bin, but it’s dangerous to workers who have to handle the shards of glass. The other problem is that broken glass pieces mix together, making it hard to sort the clear, brown, green and blue glass pieces. The only time you should break the glass jars and containers is if it’s required in your district.
• Skip the Bag: People often think it helps with sorting by placing the different glass items into separate bags. This makes sorting more complex for workers as they must remove the items from the bag and then bring the bag to the correct recycling area. Plus, if you use a plastic bag for sorting, that bag could get caught up in the machinery and cause expensive damage. Only separate the glass into bags if you’re instructed to do so.

The Benefits of Proper Glass Recycling

Once you’ve recycled glass correctly, you’ve helped the world take one step towards many benefits. It’s more than giving items a new life by making new items with recycled materials. 

• Conserve Resources: You need lime, silica sand, and soda ash to make glass. It’s estimated that around 690 billion glass bottles and jars were manufactured in 2020. Imagine all of those bottles. A glass bottle contains about 70% of its weight in sand. Recycling conserves resources.
• Energy Savings: Crushed recycled glass reduces the amount of energy needed for the materials needed to make new items. It takes a lot of energy to mine the materials and produce glass from scratch. When you recycle, you reduce the amount of energy used to make glass products.
• Job Creation: Recycling facilities need workers to sort and properly recycle glass and other recyclable materials. The more you recycle, the more job growth there is.
• Lower Emissions: Going back to the materials needed to make glass, mining, processing, and heating those materials produce emissions. Recycled materials don’t need the same manufacturing processes, so emissions are reduced.
• Reduced Landfill Waste: It takes glass centuries to break down. That one glass pickle jar may not seem like much, but pile it with 100 other jars. They take up a lot of space. Recycling keeps these items from filling up the landfill.

Find Local Guidance for Glass Recycling Success

With recycled glass helping with everything from road repairs to new glass bottles and jars, it’s important to recycle correctly. It’s a powerful component of a circular economy when it’s sorted properly and sent to the correct recycling facility. 

If you’re struggling with how to recycle glass in your area. Recycle Nation can help. Use our online recycling search tool to find where to bring your glass bottles and jars that aren’t accepted in your curbside recycling bin.