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glass, achieving smart savings in WEIGHTY BENEFITS OF
weight, setting up sophisticated LOSING WEIGHT
supply chains and creating styl- The argument that is
ish designs, all aimed at giving it often put forward by con-
a contemporary image. sumers is the weight of a
glass bottle – a criterion
WIEGAND-GLAS which can easily diminish
The success of these endeav- any environmental aware-
ours can be seen, for instance, ness, in favour of PET
in the 2017 German Packaging bottles. However, this
Award which went to Wiegand- criticism has long ceased
Glas for a new youthful design of to be relevant. Thanks to
the traditional Bocksbeutel wine light glass technology, the
bottle used for Franconian wine – container glass industry is
a highlight created in a joint pro- in a position to reduce
ject between the designer Peter the weight of different
Schmidt and the Franconian types of glass packaging
Winegrowers’ Association. by up to 40 per cent. A
The company is equally inno- one-litre German Hock
vative in its contemporary and bottle, for instance, now
efficient production process, only weighs 345 grams,
with its energy recovery from compared with 600 grams
hot waste gas which allows so- – nearly twice as much
called pre-heating technology – 40 years ago. And yet
and therefore saves 10 to 15 per this has not diminished
cent in primary energy. the strength of the bottle,
The melting temperature as optimised design has
required for processing can be made it possible to achieve
reached much faster, leading a more uniform wall thick-
to a higher base temperature ness. It’s an advantage that
and thus a higher daily melting makes such bottles much
capacity. lighter, although their
lower weight also leads to
OWENS-ILLINOIS substantial savings in raw
Another successful company materials and energy, opti-
with a similar design focus and mises handling and reduc-
environmental awareness is O-I es transport costs.
(Owens-Illinois).
Their beer bottles made them WASTE GLASS CREATES
the first glass packaging com- SUSTAINABILITY – AND
pany anywhere in the world GLASS RECYCLING IS
to receive gold certification HIP
for material health under the One unbeatable benefit
Cradle-to-Cradle® standard. In of a glass bottle is its dou-
this context, it is also worth ble potential in terms of
mentioning the MyPour design, container recycling, as it
which targets the growing sec- can be refilled up to 50
tor of craft and gourmet beer times before being recycled
brewers. as waste glass and then fed
The asymmetrical bottleneck back into the production
is diagonal to the rest of the bot- process. At the moment
tle, making it possible to control the average proportion of
the head of foam. Depending on ‘waste’ glass is around 60
the rotation and angle of the bot- per cent, and in fact up
tle, the pourer can influence the to 97 per cent for the less
way the beer runs into the glass. popular green glass. Glass

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