O-I Glass has joined the Don’t Trash Glass campaign to increase recycling rates in Colorado, USA.

Bars, restaurants and hospitality venues in Colorado can recycle their glass bottles and jars thanks to the Don’t Trash Glass programme.

The initiative was founded by Glass King Recovery and Recycling and the Glass Packaging Institute (GPI), to provide options to collect glass for recycling from businesses.

Glass bottles and jars are separated by colour and turned into cullet at Glass to Glass in Broomfield, Colorado.

Recycled bottles are taken to O-I Glass' facility in Windsor or the Rocky Mountain Bottle Company (RMBC) manufacturing site in Wheat Ridge.

There they are made into new bottles with increased recycled content within the state.

Robert Hippert, Sustainability Strategy Leader for O-I Glass, said: "Glass is never trash.

"Glass packaging is a valuable resource that, when recycled, provides economic, environmental, and social value to our shared communities.

"When we let glass packaging slip through our recycling systems, and into our landfills, we are throwing away potential processing jobs, increasing costs related to packaging production, and depriving ourselves of a local supply chain of recycled glass that reduces raw material demand, emissions and energy consumption associated with packaging production."

Recycled glass bottles can become new bottles in as little as 30 days.

A 2024 Sustainability Report revealed O-I’s conservation of nearly 145,000 tons of glass driven by 44 closed-loop partnership programmes, like Don’t Trash Glass, globally.

According to a recent study, Colorado has an 11% recycling rate for glass bottles and containers, despite the infrastructure to sort bottles just outside Denver and bottle manufacturers like Rocky Mountain.

Scott DeFife, President of GPI, said: “Glass is a circular material, and glass recycling is best when it is a regional programme.

"There are much greater environmental and cost savings when transportation stays within a region.

“Don’t Trash Glass helps to collect clean glass from commercial facilities that are disposing of this material and will stay in the state where glass is made and used by Colorado end-markets.”

Businesses in the Don’t Trash Glass programme are provided indoor containers, thanks to a sponsorship with Busch Systems, and outdoor containers for separated bottle collection (pictured).

Business owners reduce the amount of rubbish going to landfill when their bottles are recycled.