Valpak&#39s glass collection project to expand five-fold

The project has gained more than 12,000 premises so far. Three additional vehicles will be added to the fleet by the end of the year bringing the total vehicle contingent to 32.

“There is a huge amount of glass in the UK which just goes straight to landfill and is never recycled,” said Rosalind Dorning, market development manager of the project. “Recycle-more-glass gives hotels, restaurants, pubs and even festivals the opportunity to do their bit for the environment without having to commit large amounts of time or money.”

The project collects around 3,000 tonnes of unsorted glass a month from bins supplied to each business, at no charge to the clients. Material is then either sorted and recycled by reprocessors who have colour separation equipment or blended for use in aggregates or the manufacture of fibreglass insulation.

Britain's largest compliance scheme launched the service in response to licensed premises not recycling enough glass due to the time-consuming effort involved in having to segregate it. In addition, space constraints for many premises, especially inner-city bars and restaurants mean they are unable to store used glass on site before collection.

Expansion
But although Valpak aims to expand recycle-more-glass nationwide in addition to its coverage of major cities, there are no plans for the project to move beyond glass.

“At the moment there are no plans to expand collection to encompass different materials,” Ms Dorning said, but would not rule out such a move from happening in some time in the future, especially since the infrastructure is already in place.

The one-year anniversary also marks a move to collect glass from outdoor festivals. Recycle-more-glass has teamed up with waste management team Network Recycling UK to ensure that all bottles disposed of at this weekend’s WOMAD festival are collected from the site and recycled.

However, some critics have claimed that collecting glass from so many different locations may mean that transportation costs make the project economically unviable. But Ms Dorning said that the cost-efficiency of pick-ups “depends on the route density.”

She said: “We make sure that it is economically viable to do, and we make sure we have enough people on board using the scheme, including big groups and chains in order to make the scheme viable.”

Click here for the Recycle-more-glass website.