Welcome to the Solutions Database,
a guide to technologies, strategies, and best practices for reducing plastic waste

• High recycling potential: Glass can be recycled technically endlessly without degradation of its core properties. In practice, glass recycling is affected by a range of factors, including the need for extensive quality processing, material loss during collection and processing, relatively low market value, and transportation challenges due to weight. In addition to bottle-to-bottle uses, recycled glass is also used to manufacture fiberglass insulation and other building products and as an aggregate material (4).
• High recycled content potential: Glass can achieve high levels of recycled content. Critical to that content is available supply, color separation and the need for high levels of purity in recycled cullet.
• Strong reusability potential: Using glass for deposit return schemes linked to refill systems (where the bottle remains in-tact, and is not broken and re-melted for recycling) have proven to be effective and have reached scale in many countries. For reuse schemes, glass bottles often have to be made heavier and more durable than for single use applications

• Consider the market: Glass is widely but not universally collected in residential recycling programs. Its weight limits viable transportation distances both from an economic and environmental perspective. It also has lower recycling market value than most other materials and bottle uses compete with other uses.
• Consider reuse: Glass is durable and can be sterilized. In order to reduce life cycle impacts and displace primary material production, re-use of glass may be a suitable option in some situations. While reusable glass typically requires a thicker design, glass can be washed and refilled up to 25 times before needing to be recycled, which also eliminates the need to use raw mate-rials for glass production. Setting up re-use programs requires a strong network of glass collection, sterilization, and reverse logistics, prioritizing local networks to reduce transportation impacts. Once glass packaging can no longer be reused, the material should be collect-ed and recycled

• Policy: Deposit return schemes help incentivize higher recycling rates for glass and result in cleaner material streams which in turn lead to higher value glass recycling, in particular for bottle-grade applications. Nearly half of the glass collected for bottle-grade recycling comes from the 10 states that have implemented bottle deposit legislation (6).
• Invest in recovery and end markets through high recycled content: Due to the predominantly commingled-stream nature of the U.S. recycling system, materials tend to be interdependent. For that reason, an effective recovery system for all materi-als is an essential ingredient for the success of all packaging materials. Glass faces challeng-es from a recycling system cost and quality perspective, which has led to some communities eliminating glass in curbside collection. Strong commitment to high recycled content helps strengthen the place of glass in collection and processing. Advocacy and investment for keeping or including glass in collection programs is critical for the long-term success of glass packaging.

SMEs in Indonesia: A lot of SME businesses have started to have products served in glass bottles. Some examples are: Mana Mlyk, Hiro drinks, Milk Up, Komboothcha, etc. Milk Up, for example, is a small family-run business in Bali that promotes a healthy lifestyle by keeping the quality of our dairy products in Bali high at all times. They use glass packaging and have a takeback program. Customers will receive free products for returning their glass containers.