"Glass is 100 per cent recyclable, meaning that every bit of the glass we make can be recycled into a new glass container – over and over again."

O-I Australia received the Australian Packaging Covenant's award for highest performing large packaging manufacturer. The award recognises the significant sustainability achievements made by O-I Australia in the design, manufacture and recovery of glass packaging products. O-I Australia also represent a key example of manufacturers taking financial reasonability for reducing the impact of their products, running a Returnable Packaging Program for their customers and investing in new infrastructure to sort and process recyclable material.

Changes to bottle design
resulted in

5,895 tonnes less glass being used.

Key Achievements

• Changes to the design of 21 products during 2013-14 to make them lighter, resulted in 502 million containers being manufactured using 5,895 tonnes less glass.
• During the 2013-14 financial year 256,571 tonnes of glass packaging was diverted from landfill and used to produce new containers.
• 84,258 tonnes of waste was prevented from going to landfill through the Returnable Packaging Program.

Key Activities

• Continuously review the design and size of their products in order to identify new ways of reducing the quantity of glass required in manufacturing processes.
• Developing a new high-capacity cullet optical sorting plant in Brisbane with joint funding from the APC. The plant will recover large volumes of recycled glass for use at O-I's glass container manufacturing plant, ensuring that all glass has the opportunity to be recovered through a closed-loop process and recycled into new glass containers.
• Established a Returnable Packaging Program that encourages retail customers to return composite dividers, pallets, plastic divers and top frames for re-use. The program uses the existing distribution network to collect and return items.
• Have incorporated more green cullet (a colour that is harder to recycle) into the amber manufacturing process to reduce the impact of excess greens glass.

O-I Australia quote

"As the makers of glass, O-I has proudly incorporated sustainable practices into our business for over a century. It is at the heart of all our planning, production and logistics. Glass is 100 per cent recyclable, meaning that every bit of the glass we make can be recycled into a new glass container – over and over again. It takes less energy to melt recycled glass. We save enough energy to power a 60 watt light bulb for four hours with every recycled glass bottle we use in the manufacturing process. We continue to work with our customers and key stakeholders to lightweight our containers and invest in recycling infrastructure to improve our efficiencies and capture more recycled glass for use in our plants. We are proud to be Australia's largest consumer of recycled glass and support one of the world's best kerbside recycling networks." Gary Combes, Director – Procurement, O-I Australia