BREAKING BAD – WHY WE NEED TO GET WINE BOTTLES OUT OF KERBSIDE COLLECTIONS.

I am currently travelling in Europe and noting the separate recycling bins for collection of glass, with shared bins on the street to accommodate disposal from the many flats. Back in Oz we roll out container deposit schemes with little thought given to the value of including wine bottles to capture the glass separately, and Australians really like their wine.

Glass is a commodity; 100% recyclable and new bottles and jars can be made from used bottles and jars without the need to add virgin materials. Amazing!  South Australia’s recently released Recycling Activity Survey, 2017-18 Report, notes that 

• ‘A significant part of the Glass recovery arises from glass bottles returned as part of SA’s container deposit (or CDL) scheme.
• This source of Glass is of high quality and highly prized by re-processors and glass bottle manufacturers as a source for recycled glass content.”

https://www.greenindustries.sa.gov.au/SArecycling

This is a great outcome for our beer bottles and other glass drink containers attracting a 10-cent refund, collected cleanly and separately at our recycling depots, but the outcome is not so good for the glass in kerbside recycling bins.

Glass recovery overall was 60,000 tonnes, down 10% or 7,000 tonnes from 2016/17 and partly due to light-weighting of glass bottles (reducing the weight and using less raw materials and energy to produce) and reduced recovery of glass fines at our MRFs (Material Recovery Facilities).

In addition, we imported 57,000 tonnes of recovered glass from interstate for reprocessing. Surely we should seek to be closing the loop by increasing the recovery of clean local product?

Glass recovered from kerbside recycling is of low quality and the stockpiles making news clearly indicate there is no market demand for it. Just look at SKM, Coolaroo, described as a giant glass mountain and a disaster waiting to happen; $10 million poured into cleaning up the mess.

https://www.theage.com.au/politics/victoria/deal-with-it-now-skm-s-glass-mountain-a-tragedy-waiting-to-happen-20190822-p52juc.html

 So why is our kerbside glass of such low quality, leading to stockpiles or destined for road base?

In comingled recycling kerbside collections glass is smashed to smithereens.  Much of it is too small to be recovered at all and shards of glass become embedded in paper and cardboard, making this commodity far less desirable, contaminated, and reducing the quality of recycling outcomes.

I have personally audited hundreds of recycling loads, ranging from small samples of 15 to 30 bins where the glass is almost all intact,( some gets broken as the load tips, but even then the pieces are mostly large), up to 100 bin samples where the impact of compaction starts to be obvious with around 10% broken and a portion unrecoverable. This audit process is valuable for providing analysis of the glass composition in recycling, but it does not reflect the end state of recycling in normal kerbside collections of 400 + bins. A sample audit from a normal kerbside collection has a dramatically different outcome.

Waste contractors are careful to not over compact recycling loads, but it is not practical to collect fewer bins to ensure the integrity of the glass for improved recovery. Glass falls to the bottom of the truck as it stops and starts repeatedly to empty bins then makes its way to the Materials recovery Facility or MRF. It smashes and smashes against the inside of the truck as well as itself and anything else heavy, resulting in very little, if any, being intact when the load tips and a very large proportion can simply be irrecoverable.

Glass comprises 20 – 40% of recycling by weight and more than 90% of this is wine bottles, varying across councils with the drinking habits of South Australians.

Waste Reduction SA’s audit team use rakes and sieves to separate recoverable and non-recoverable glass for recycling contamination analysis. Typically, anything under two centimetres is considered too small to recover.

The discussion to include wine bottles as part of our Container Deposit Scheme has lost momentum and been put on the back burner; not at all helped by commentary that we should increase the refund to 20 cents and include other glass containers such as jars and juice bottles.  These are unnecessary distractions and a hindrance to getting on with making the necessary changes to dramatically improve glass recovery and eliminate our kerbside waste recovery systems of the burden of smashed glass and shards.  10 cents is a perfectly adequate refund and by removing wine bottles, WHICH MAKE UP THE MAJORITY OF GLASS IN KERBSIDE RECYCLING, the rest of our glass will come through the kerbside collection process intact. These food jars and bottles are generally not light-weighted and will be cushioned by the paper and card that is 50%+ of our recyclables.

It is time to admit we have got it wrong and to evolve our currently dysfunctional kerbside recycling systems to support the majority of glass being separated at the source!  Its absolute madness to take a 100% recyclable commodity, smash it to smithereens and then try to recover it.  A staggering amount of money goes into installing the machinery and technology to recover a product that largely has no end market when we need to be closing the loop.

China Sword has shaken the country into finally understanding that we need to be responsible for our own waste. Let’s start with glass – improve recovery, recycle locally and support local recyclers by encouraging manufacturers to source a local recycled product rather than cheap imports of bottles and jars manufactured from virgin materials.

We have an extensive network of recycling depots already happy to take your wine bottles, some offer a small refund, not 10 cents but that should not stop the growing number of keen environmentalists in SA from adopting this practice. It would, at least, be a start.