A recycling colleague contacted me recently to get statistics on how much energy is saved by recycling glass. I only had one or two statistics available, so I went for a little hunt on the net. Here is what I found. The information is truly amazing.

The energy savings from recycling translate back to consumers whether we realize it or not. Unfortunately, we are still wasting more than we are recycling. Approximately 10 million tons of glass were thrown away in 2006. Based on the stat below, if we had recycled 75% of this glass, approximately 67,500,000 gallons of fuel could have been used for something else. I could have driven my old Honda Accord, which got roughly 30 miles to the gallon, for 2,250,000 miles. Or more realistically, 150 Accords could have driven 15,000 miles. That was just for one year. We have been wasting this much fuel (glass), or more, since the 1970s. It is no wonder the price of fuel is what it is today.

Source: http://www.grrecycledglass.com/id13.html

· Based on statistics from the U.S. Geological Survey in 2002: Sixty billion, one hundred eighty six million pounds of silica sand was strip mined for use in US water filtration in that year alone.

· The Great Lakes Region is the third largest supplier of silica sand.

· According to EPA statistics – the U.S. produced 12,470 tons of glass in 2003 with a recovery rate of 19%

· Recycling one glass bottle saves enough energy to light a 100 watt light bulb for 4 hours or operate a television for 3 hours.

· Producing glass from virgin materials requires 30% more energy than producing it from crushed used glass. Producing glass from virgin materials requires 30% more energy than producing it from crushed used glass.

· It takes approximately 1 million years for a glass bottle to break down in a land fill.

· In the U.S. today, only 34% of all glass containers are recycled.

· Glass never wears out-it can be recycled forever.

· Glass containers save 9 gallons of fuel (oil) for every ton of glass recycled.

Additional information about glass disposal, and energy savings available through recycling glass is available at http://www.solidwastedistrict.com/stats/glass.html.

Here is another link with Q&A’s regarding glass production and the use of recycled cullet in the production process. http://www.gpi.org/recycling/faq/#faq2