GreenGlass said that by recycling this amount of glass waste, more than 6,500 tons of CO2 have been saved, the equivalent of the emissions produced by an airplane that flies around the world about 350 times.

Established in 2013, GreenGlass paved the way of the glass recycling market in Romania, under a €5 million investment with a recycling capacity of 110,000 tons/year.

The company turns 100% glass waste into a valuable resource for the glass packaging industry. A glass bottle can go from a recycling bin to a store shelf as a new glass container in as little as 30 days.

Marius Costache, CEO of GreenGlass, said: "It can take 1 million years for a glass bottle to decompose in the environment, possibly even more if it’s in landfill.

"Instead, it takes a few days for a bottle to come out of the recycling process and reappear on the store shelf as a new product.

"This is what is called the life cycle of the circular packaging.There is also a close link between recycling and reducing the carbon footprint on the environment, and glass recycling saves energy, resources, CO2 emissions and improves air quality”.

By using advanced recycling processes and optoelectronic sorting installations it results in glass cullet with a high degree of purity - at least 99, 99%, which the manufacturers of packaging glass can use as raw material.

“Recycling is essential for the environment and we are proud to have modern facilities in Romania that can turn waste into resources. Recycling of 6 tons of glass allows to avoid 1 tons of CO2 emissions”, added Mr Costache.

What happens to the bottle in the recycling plant?

The first step in the process of recycling glass at GreenGlass is pre-sorting. The larger contaminants such as PET, plastic bags, or other municipal waste are removed.

Then, the glass waste is carried by a conveyor belt under a magnetic band which extracts the ferrous metals and by using Eddy-Current separator, the aluminium is removed.

The glass is carried into a sealed Vacuum Dryer, where is heated to high temperatures and the organic waste burned.

One of the most important steps is optoelectronic sorting. This process removes the CSP (ceramic, stones and porcelain) type impurities and sort the cullet in two categories: flint and amber. Then the finished product is ready to be used in other industries.