The Glass Recycling Process

Glass is one of the most reliably recyclable materials out there. Have you ever wondered how exactly glass is recycled? What happens to your bottles and jars after your Atlanta recycling service picks it up? This video has the answer.

After the glass gets picked up from your curb, it’s sent to a local recycling depot, where it gets sorted. Next, the glass goes to a reprocessing company and is crushed into little pieces, or “cullet.” The cullet is combined with silicate (sand), sodium carbonate, and calcium carbonate, then heated to over 1000 degrees to make new glass. Clear glass tends to be remade into food jars, while darker glass is most often recycled into beer and wine bottles. Though this video focuses on recycling in Devon, UK, the same process applies to almost everywhere glass is recycled.