The Hindu Business Line : ‘Recycle glass, don’t just reuse it’

There is no way you can guess how long that bottle has been around, left discarded at somebody’s home or on a garbage heap, before a rag picker put it back into circulation, says the All India Glass Manufacturers Association.

The association wants to discourage the reuse of glass bottles by the unorganised sector and wishes to encourage recycling, according to Mr V. Sreeram, General Manager, Hindusthan National Glass & Industries Ltd.

Addressing a group of journalists on a tour of Hindusthan National’s bottle manufacturing facility at Pondicherry, Mr Sreeram pointed out that bottles can last forever. Till they break they can be reused forever.

Now there is help at hand for the ignorant consumer.

Date to be displayed

The association has decided that manufacturers would incorporate the date of bottle manufacture when the bottles are moulded in the factory.

So when a buyer takes home that anonymous food item, the person is at least sure of the age of the container, if not the content.

This would help increase buyers’ awareness of the danger of buying food products in anonymous bottles, says Mr Sreeram, a spokesperson for the association.

Revenue loss too

Limiting reuse by the unorganised sector is not just about health and hygiene. It is also about curbing loss of revenue to the Government from taxes that should have been paid on the new bottles and the content, and of course, preventing loss of business to the bottle manufacturers.

Glass container manufacturing is a Rs 4,500-crore a year business and the reuse by the unorganised sector in food and pharmaceuticals could match this size, he says.

The environment too stands to gain as recycling bottles means manufacturers use less sand — the primary raw material for glass, along with other minerals such as feldspar, he says.

As good as new

Mr Sreeram points to the mounds of glass bottles and scrap collected in Hindusthan National’s factory, which churns out over 15 lakh bottles a day.

Broken bottles and scrap glass - cullet, as they are called in the industry - are melted down at 1,500 degrees centigrade and incorporated with the rest of the raw material to mould glass that is as good as new.

Glass can be recycled infinite times to get containers of the same quality as those made from virgin raw materials, he says.

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