Recap: Glass recycling with Gemma Scott of Richmond Council

This show was published Friday, July 14, 2023

Overview

Next season we will be looking at wine packaging and shipping which accounts for around half the CO₂ footprint in wine. We will be exploring the future of low carbon packaging.

To give us some background for the upcoming series, this week we start a series looking at glass recycling as we follow a bottle from collection, and find out what actually happens to those bins of empty wine bottles we put out.

Recap: Gemma Scott, when we interviewed her, she managed the recycling depot in Twickenham where glass is stored until collection for further processing, and the household waste and recycling centre in Kew where residents take waste.

Gemma's team is responsible for meeting recycling targets. Happily, Richmond residents recycling rate is 40%, one of the highest in London. Glass is collected in 2 ways - either from curbside where it is mixed with cans and plastic bottles in a black box or from recycling points (called 'bring sites') where glass is segregated by colour. Mixing glass, cans and bottles together in black box is easier for residents and more cost-effective to collect with fewer vehicles and staff needed. However the value of the unsorted glass is lower than glass sorted by colour and there is a higher value in clear glass due to the large manufacturing base in the UK for clear glass. All material from the curbside comes to the recycling depot and then goes to another facility to be sorted using a hi-tech automated process before being sold on through British Glass.

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The music used for the UK Wine Show is Griffes de Jingle 1 by Marcel de la Jartèle and Silence by Etoile Noire.