UK based glass recycling company Recresco has won two Welsh local county council contracts for kerbside collected glass into its Cwmbran depot.

The contracts will see the company reprocessing around 2,500 tonnes from Torfaen Borough Council and around 4,200 tonnes from Powys County Council per annum.

The commercial and residential collected bottle glass will be transported to the state of the art Cwmbran plant where it will be sorted and processed for end use at Torfaen based Knauf Insulation for the manufacture of high-quality fibreglass.

The contract with Cwmbran Borough Council is an extension of an already established 12-month agreement, whilst the Powys County Council contract was awarded following a successful tender process.

On World Earth Day, Bormioli Pharma announced that in 2021 the company had doubled the use of sustainable raw materials in production compared to 2020, a result that well positions the company to achieve the goal declared last year of using 50% sustainable raw materials in production by 2025.

"We believe that sustainability must be pursued through concrete and measurable actions" commented Andrea Lodetti, CEO of Bormioli Pharma. "The acceleration we gave in 2021 to achieve the target is a sign of this commitment, but also of the growing interest we are gathering from the pharmaceutical industry".

The use of recycled glass and plastic, and bio-based plastics reached 32%, compared to 16% in 2020.

The Society of Glass Technology (SGT) has announced the return of the Furnace Solutions conference on 8-9 June 2022.

Having traditionally been staged in Stoke-on-Trent in the UK, this year’s event will take place at the Totally Wicked Stadium in St Helens, overlooking the construction site of Glass Futures’ Global Centre of Excellence.

Saint-Gobain North America, through its electrochromic glass subsidiary SageGlass, has set a target of recycling over 1,000 tons of glass per year for the next five years, diverting the material from landfills and upcycling the components for future use through an agreement with a third-party processor based in Minnesota.

This agreement comes just months after the company announced its new global Grow and Impact strategy, which includes reducing waste and increasing the recycling of materials at its manufacturing sites.

Of the millions of tons of glass produced annually in the United States, only 25% of glass is recycled and non-soda lime silicate glass compositions used in smartphones and other electronic devices cannot be recycled at all.

Penn State University has received funding for the project, “Enabling Improved Glass Recycling Technology and Modeling Tools,” to help promote higher recycling rates in Pennsylvania.

Governor Tom Wolf announced a $2.3 million investment in 36 student research projects aimed at advancing innovation in several sectors of manufacturing.

The programme embeds the commonwealth’s best and brightest graduate and undergraduate students with local manufacturers to develop new technologies and advance innovation state wide.

The South African Competition Commission has recommended the acquisition of Consol by Ardagh, with conditions. Concerns were raised about the effect of the merger on the market for food jars and wide mouth jar.

To remedy this concern, the merging parties agreed to a condition that ensures their continued to supply.

With respect to the public interest concerns, the Commission and the merging parties agreed on the following conditions:

(a) establishing a new Employee Share Ownership Programme which will hold 7% of the shareholding in Consol.

India’s first and only solar glass manufacturer Borosil Renewables Limited (BRL) and the Interfloat group of companies have announced the signing of a binding cash and stock deal enabling BRL to acquire a 100% stake in the Interfloat Group.

Interfloat consists of two companies, GMB Glasmanufaktur Brandenburg (GMB), based near Berlin, and Interfloat Corporation, based in Liechtenstein.

GMB is the largest solar glass producer in Europe with a current capacity of 300tpd. It has manufactured glass for Europe’s solar (solar PV as well as solar thermal) and greenhouse glass markets since 2010.

Interflot has been servicing customers in Europe for close to 40 years and has deep-rooted relationships with the glass trade in the region.

Ardagh Glass Packaging – North America has partnered with Kansas City Bier Company to supply all the brewery’s glass beer bottles.

With AGP – North America’s Pevely glass manufacturing facility supplying the bottles, helping to keep the brewery’s promise to source local products and incorporate sustainable practices into its operations.

“It is important to us to reduce our impact on the environment where possible,” said Katie Camlin, Digital and Social Media Coordinator at Kansas City Bier Company. “Glass bottles are both reusable and recyclable, and working with Ardagh, a domestic manufacturer, reduces shipping distances greatly.”

Knauf Insulation has announced a series of investments in its two UK glass mineral wool plants that will boost capacity as well as improve the range, availability and sustainability of its products for the benefit of its customers.

In St Helens, the company is set to invest over £40m to increase the plant’s total capacity by 30,000 tonnes per annum from late 2023/early 2024 and to acquire the large adjacent Pilkington Architectural site from NSG Group.