Vidrala

Recycling

Recycling glass containers is a simple process. Bottles and jars that are manufactured in the glass production plant are transported towards the bottling site where they are filled in with food or liquid products. Those food and liquid products are then shipped through the different distribution channels. From this network, the packed finished products are bought by consumers or the hotel & restaurant industry for their final consumption. Today the operation of taking used glass to recycling banks is something common among various operators in the chain: bottling plants (which throws bottles at the end of their life cycle after various re-filling operations or because of breakage during filling operation), the hotel & restaurant industry and the final consumers.

All these glass containers are part of what is now known as “recycling” which consists in picking up used glass containers, removing contaminants, and crushing it to obtain cullet. The clean cullets used as a raw material is then melted with the rest of the batch, sand, soda ash and limestone to manufacture a whole new range of bottles and jars for supply to our customeres. Glass has demonstrated itself to be one of the most sustainable packing systems for the enviroment. It is 100% recyclable, time and time again and it comes from largely available natural resources through a simple and non-polluting extracting process.

For all these reasons, glass is the natural ecological packing material.

Vidrala’s commitment

All our containers are manufactured with a high percentage of recycled glass, which means substantial savings of natural resources and a more economic use of energy. Among the ecological benefits to which we contribute, we can underline:

• Energy saving: for each 3.000 bottles put into a glass bank, we save 0,130 TOE (tonne of oil equivalent) due to the fact that recycled glass melts at a lower fusion point.
• We save on raw material and avoid ground destruction with less extraction: by recycling 3.000 bottles, we save 1.000 kilos of raw materials.
• Reduction of waste: 3.000 recycled bottles means 1.000 kilos less WASTE
• We reduce the risk of uncontrolled waste.
• water consumption is reduced by 50%