Health, taste integrity and environmental protection. These are the three concepts that blow on the glass. A reusable and recyclable material that is completely free of safety hazards. As well as a protagonist of continuous growth, serving the Made in Italy valuable food. A rosy picture, indeed ‘green‘, but improvable. Starting with collection and recycling, at the top of the so-called ‘waste hierarchy‘, as emerged in the round table discussion organized by Assovetro in Rome on 12.2.19.
Glass, production on the rise
Glass bottle production, in the first 10 months of 2018, grew by 3.2 percent. Doubling the growth trend of the past 30 years (+1.5 percent average) to over 3 million tons. Many but insufficient to cover demand. In fact, the shortage of raw material in 2017 contributed to the increase in bottle imports in 2018 (+25%, nearly 519 thousand tons).
Wine, of which Italy is confirmed as the planet’s leading producer, is driving demand. Thanks to the bubbles especially. Sparkling wine exports, between 2001 and 2017, soared 566.2 percent in value (264.8 percent in quantity). Of the 700 million bottles of sparkling wine produced, 64 percent (450 million) leave the country’s borders. And exports also increase for empty bottles (+7 percent), thanks to Italian design appreciated all over the world, especially in Southeast Asia.
Glass, risk-free packaging
The
performance
of jars (meaning food jars) is less sparkling. Production totals just over 230 thousand tons (+0.2 percent), with a decline in exports (-11 percent) attributable in part to a shortage of white (i.e., colorless) glass. Glass, however, remains the best food packaging for a few simple reasons:
– food safety, due to the absence of migration into food and beverages (which, in contrast, characterizes plastics and some metals),
– Food quality, best preserved in its authentic organoleptic properties, (1)
– content enhancement, thanks to the inimitable and perennial transparency.
The superiority of glass which food packaging has been demonstrated on several occasions. It is more effective in preserving vitamins in tomatoes than cans and multilayer material. And it better preserves the qualities of the wine, comparing with ‘
‘bag-in-box’
.
As for food safety
, the glass shines. ‘
The consumption of glass packaging is growing because consumers are increasingly aware that the use of plastic carries the risk of releasing harmful substances, such as phthalates, into the food
and bisphenol A
‘
, stresses Marco Ravasi, president of hollow glass manufacturers in Assovetro. Recalling the risks of other materials, long underestimated despite the established impact on nervous, reproductive and endocrine systems.
Glass, champion of circular economy
The environmental virtues of glass are recalled by Edo Ronchi, the father of waste management and recycling legislation in Italy (the ‘Ronchi Decree’ indeed, 1997) as well as president of the Sustainable Development Foundation. (2) ‘It is a durable, reusable, recyclable material. Unlike plastic-which when recycled does not reproduce new containers, which require virgin polymers-scrap glass allows new glass packaging to be reproduced, with the same characteristics as those made from virgin raw materials‘.
The Italian glass industry absorbs all the glass waste collected in the country and reuses it to produce new packaging. (3) All this for unlimited cycles, without loss of matter and with 4-6 times less energy than required for production from virgin raw materials. An exemplary material in the circular economy, as well as useful:
– To counter the effects of climate change
,
– To reduce waste in the seas, where plastic packaging is still a major player.
,
– to mitigate risks from microplastic pollution, which also carry over into agricultural wastewater (as found in a recent study in Lombardy)
, as well as in food.
Glass collection, still too much waste
Recycling affects 73% of packaging released for consumption (2017, up 2 percent from 2016). More can be done, but more effort is needed. ‘To really recycle everything we need to improve the quality of collection’, explains Franco Grisan, president of CoReVe, the national consortium for glass collection and recycling.
Six percent of glass scrap collected throughout Italy today is destined for waste. Due to more than two and a half million tons of materials foreign to glass and incompatible with the recycling process-because they contain lead, which is not allowed in glass (except in residual amounts)-such as ceramics and crystals. In 2017, the share of waste increased alarmingly (+41%, compared to 2016), negatively impacting industrial processes. Detection (using optical readers) and elimination of lead-bearing waste slows the process and increases its cost. At an additional cost to the environment, as these materials must be disposed of in landfills as waste.
Collection and recycling, how to improve
Improving the quality and quantity of glass collected and recycled is possible and indeed necessary, but targeted interventions are needed. The panel discussion organized by Assovetro highlighted a number of priorities.
– More recycling collection. In some parts of Italy, separate glass collection reaches 80 percent of the material released for consumption, while in others it is stuck at 30 percent. Local governments must be held accountable. And eloquent is the video shot by students at a school in Termini Imerese, as part of an initiative promoted by Assovetro, where the interviewees declare themselves sensitive to the issue of recycling but lament the lack of response from the city administration.
– Less waste. Foreign materials severely restrain recycling, costing an estimated 200 euros per ton. And they create a disposal problem, albeit not as serious as that involving plastic packaging. Waste continues to grow, in proportion to collection (177 to 250 tons, 2016- 2017). This trend needs to be reversed by educating the population about proper waste disposal.
– More glass scrap processing plants. More facilities are needed. Increasing plant capacity can improve the trade balance of glass packaging, boosting the economy and employment in a growing sector. Downstream capacity needs to be increased, as the plants are saturated (and in fact three new furnaces are on the way). But also upstream, as the creation of scrap sorting platforms near collection points is urgently needed. The collected glass still travels too far to be transported to glassworks located in the industrial areas of large packaging users.
– Simplify the delivery of collected glass. Organizing municipalities (and their collecting expressions) into consortia simplifies scrap management. They complain about initiatives that complicate such processes, such as a law from the Apulia Region requiring CoReVe to manage relations with individual municipalities instead of a few consortia representing them.
– Regulatory interventions. Legislation trudges on, slowed down in disputes over central and regional powers. And it is incapable of pandering to the urgency of End of Waste, to ennoble ‘waste’ into secondary raw material (MPS). Italy and the EU have not issued implementing measures, and there are at least 6 decrees stopped at the Ministry of Environment. Plants are ready to process waste into MPS, but blocked by regulatory shutdown. With a huge waste of diapers, tires, material collected from street sweeping (sand and gravel), biogas (to be put into the grid, after carbon dioxide recovery).
Marta Strinati
Notes
(1) Taking care to use glass of varying color intensity, in relation to foods subject to oxidation (e.g., extra virgin olive oils)
(2) Edo Ronchi, several times minister of the environment.
(3) The Italian glass container industry has 18 glass factories with 40 plants, 55 percent of them in the North. Turnover is 2 billion euros and there are 8,300 employees, 97 percent of whom are permanent, partly because of the complexity of the process, which rewards experience. Source: Asso glass
Professional journalist since January 1995, he has worked for newspapers (Il Messaggero, Paese Sera, La Stampa) and periodicals (NumeroUno, Il Salvagente). She is the author of journalistic surveys on food, she has published the book "Reading labels to know what we eat".
