At the beginning of December, the winners of the glass collection campaign, launched by Alea Ambiente, in collaboration with CoReVe. The project, aimed at public businesses in the municipalities of Forlì, Forlimpopoli, Bertinoro and Meldola, aimed to raise awareness of commercial activities by optimizing collection operations. The biggest news? The separation of transparent glass from colored glass.
Why is it important to make a separation between clear and colored glass?
The numbers of glass collection in Italy are extremely convincing, what would facilitate further improvement is the division based on color.
The different colors in fact involve different materials and recovery processes, but to date the selection systems are unable to carry out this separation. A dynamic that hinders recycling, reducing the quantity of material sent for recovery.
By placing white and colored packaging in a single container you can obtain, via recycling, only colored glass. Otherwise, if you opt for chromatic differentiation, it is possible to obtain new white glass.
There is a further substantial difference between the two types of material. Colored bottles (green or amber) can be produced by loading the ovens with secondary raw material in quantities of up to 95%. For the white ones, the percentage of recycled glass drops significantly, stopping at around 20%.
By separating the material by color we therefore produce a notable energy savings on melting and raw materials, as well as aabundant reduction of processing waste.
A look into the future
The results of the campaign launched in Forlì and its surroundings were convincing: 7.200 tons of colored glass and 200 transparent ones were recovered. The next step, although rather complex, aims toextension of the initiative to domestic users.
This objective would require an increase in collection containers (at home and in cities) and a specific campaign to sensitize citizens to the correct division of packaging.
Will this be the next challenge presented by CoReVe on the national territory? And the citizens will prove receptive to this new practice, maintaining the Italian podium in the special ranking of the most virtuous European countries in recycling the green material par excellence?
Sources: ilrestodelcarlino.it, Repubblica.it, asp.asti.it
