Refilling glass bottles when you are at work or home is an excellent solution and will help to reduce the waste circulating in the world’s oceans. While any glass bottle with a resealable lid can be utilised, innovative companies are coming up with designs for refillable bottles that look attractive and can be tailored to the owner’s own personality. Like all glass, the bottles can be recycled at the end of their life and they are free of the Bisphenol-A (BPA) and other chemicals that are found in some packaging materials.
Flaska is a European company which sells refillable glass bottles. The company claims that their bottles are ‘programmed’ to change the structure of the water and make it taste like more spring water. Flaska’s bottles come in a protective sock made from either cotton or neoprene. Socks are available in different colours and patterns so you can personalise your bottle. The glass in a Flaska is thicker than that in normal bottles, making it more resistant to knocks and falls. You can become a fan on their Facebook page if you’d like to stay informed!
Tap is Terrific is another range of reusable glass bottles which is made by Faucet Face. They come with a BPA-free cap and are dishwasher safe. When you buy four of the bottles, Faucet Face donates a Biosand filter to a family without access to potable tap water. The filter eliminates around 90 to 95% of the impurities, bringing fresh clean water to remote communities around the world.
For the ultimate in personalised bottles, take a look at the range offered by Love Bottle. As well as being partially made from recycled glass, you can make the Love Bottle uniquely yours. Simply write or draw on the printed area of the bottle to personalise it. The Love Bottle also comes with a swing-top so you never lose the lid.
Do you use a refillable bottle at home, the gym or at work? How do you personalise yours? Why not share your creations, and your reasons for using reusable glass bottles at the Friends of Glass Facebook page.
Parents with babies often have little time to spend preparing food for their youngsters and many rely on store-bought packaged food. But these products are often packed with preservatives to extend their shelf life.
For parents lucky enough to live in New York City, there is now an alternative: Farm to Baby NYC. Using fresh local and organic ingredients, Farm to Baby NYC prepares healthy fresh jars of baby food and home delivers them to its clients in the city.
Farm to Baby NYC only uses resealable glass containers for its baby products as glass has absolutely nothing to hide! Using glass also ensures the food is free of Bisphenol-A (BPA) and that the taste and quality of the baby food is not affected by the packaging. It alters nothing to the taste or vitamins it preserves. And that’s why it’s the purest packaging for everything.
Next time the company makes a delivery they collect the empty jars and reuse them again, avoiding the need for the packaging to be sent to landfill.
We believe that this might be the first home delivered baby food service in the world. But if you know of similar providers closer to home, why not let us know through the Friends of Glass Facebook page or tweet us at @GlassFriendsEUR.
And if you’re inspired to make your own baby food, the BabyCentre has some tips to get you started. Just remember to keep your baby healthy by packaging your results in pure natural glass!
The days of people throwing reusable glass bottles into rubbish bins might be a thing of the past. Paul Ketz, who studies eco-design at the University of Cologne, has invented a collection ring – known in German as a Pfandring – which goes over public bins. Instead of throwing bottles into the bin, people place them in the ring where they can be easily accessed.
In many parts of Europe, a deposit is applied to the cost of reusable bottles when they are sold and it can only be recovered when the bottle is returned. Ketz designed the ring so that reusable bottles are not mixed in with general rubbish. Some people make a living collecting and returning the bottles, and Ketz wanted to make this as easy as possible and reduce the health risks for deposit collectors.
The collection ring was designed as part of Ketz’s university course, and has been developed in cooperation with the local Cologne waste disposal authority AWB. For AWB, the collection ring means both a cleaner city and reduced costs as the reusable glass does not need to be sorted from other rubbish.
With its simplicity and ease of use, the collection ring has already proved popular during six months of testing in Cologne. Ketz (and the Friends of Glass!) hopes it will be adopted by other cities.
On 26th March, FEVE published the latest numbers on glass recycling in Europe.
This is what it looks like:
Glass Recycling in Europe, 2010
In 2010, 68% of household glass in Europe was recycled.
This is what it represents:
- 68% is equal to 25 million glass bottles and jars.
- 20 out 25 million (80%) were recycled back into bottles and jars.
- 80% of household glass requires about 12 million tons of the planet’s natural resources (sand, limestone, soda ash) and releases 7 million tons of CO2 into our planet’s atmosphere to produce.
- 7 million tons of CO2 is approximately the same amount attributed to a small nation of cars on the road per year*.
Every 10% increase in recycled glass = a decrease of
-10% in sulfur dioxide (SO2)
-6% in nitrogen oxide (NOx)
-17% in carbon dioxide (CO2)
-2.5%°in electricity and natural gas
-6°C in furnace temperatures (during manufacturing process)
-9.5% in raw materials.
(Source: Glass Packaging Institute)
This is what it means:
These characteristics make glass a clear example to follow in the ambitious strategy of the European Commission to make the European Union a ‘resource efficient’ economy where recycling is the key factor to waste reduction and where waste is considered as a valuable resource.
(Conclusion of the Feve Study.)
Trying to balance a healthy diet around local and seasonal produce can often be quite tricky.
If we have to rule out every food source that comes wrapped in environmentally-harmful packaging, whilst adhering to the World Health Organisation’s 5-a-Day Program encouraging us to eat a minimum of five fruit and vegetables per day, many of us are left juggling a cabbage, potato and apple throughout winter.
Playing on our idea of fast-food, SLOW FAST FOOD offers slow-to-perish, fast-to-eat food - in this case, fruit and vegetables.
As the brand name suggests, there’s more than meets the eye. Not only does the brand gently nudge us to re-evaluate our associations with fast-food by replacing a burger with a vegetable, the simple, all-glass design is an accolade to the natural, purity of each ingredient it contains.
This what they promise: Combining fresh produce in a design traditionally used to conserve food, SLOW FAST FOOD offers seasonally cultivated fruit and vegetables, contained in hand-filled glass pots ready to be enjoyed now or later.
The Facts:
Glass jars have been around since the 1800s but it wasn’t until the after 1900 that home canning was encouraged and seen as a way to provide better diets, preserve flavor, food longevity and reduce the cost of living. By the end of the century, the decline of the family farm, the low cost of commercially canned foods and the widespread use of freezers had made home canning more of a hobby than a habit.
The Trends: In the new millennium, we have other things on our mind. With the growing concerns over global-warming, as well as our valid worries over food safety, the relationships between food, flavor, health, packaging and sustainability are now at the forefront of our thoughts.
A trend among consumers is emerging: the desire to live a healthy and sustainable lifestyle. This has been seen in the rapid rise of organic food and farming, the return to popularity of home-cooking and preserving, and an increasing awareness and interest in our foods’ sources and ingredients.
More and more of us are realizing that the future of our planet may very well depend on where we get our food, what we choose to eat and how we decide to store it.
The Research: Commissioned by FEVE (the European Container Glass Federation), the InSites study asked over consumers in 17 countries across Europe what they thought about various packaging materials.
In a nutshell, the survey reveals:
- 65% of consumers prefer glass because it preserves taste,
- 63% perceive that it is safest health-wise,
- 50% say it is the most environmentally-friendly.
The same kind of survey was carried out in the States in 2006 with the same results:
Clearly, consumers agree that glass is their preferred packaging for consumer health and the environment.
Nutritious and Delicious The InSites survey goes on to show that the preference for glass is particularly high when it comes to certain food and drink categories where flavor is everything, such as spirits, wines and beers. More than that, glass also preserves the natural aromas, tastes and textures, making it the perfect material to store fresh and perishable products as fruit juices, smoothies and tomato-based sauces.
Glass is the material of choice for chefs, in particular, Geir Skeie who knows that glass is a true food lover. The purity of glass ensures that food retains its great flavour.
WATCH THE VIDEO:
Recipes and Instructions
Why not give it a go? Here are some handy links to get you started:
Did you know that on average, every Italian consumes around 37 bottles of wine in a year? And almost all (9 out of 10) prefer to buy wine in glass bottles. To meet that demand, almost 2.2 billion glass bottles are needed every single year!
In November last year, Assovetro – the Italian Association of glass producers – organised a tour of the area around Florence to enable journalists to discover the importance of the relationship between wine and glass. The tour began with talks from two experts in the field: Marco Esti, Associate Professor of Enology (the study of wine to you and I) at the University of Tuscia; and the renowned Italian food and wine sommelier, Adua Villa. Both presented scientific evidence that showed the taste and sensory characteristics of food and wine are best preserved by the neutral properties of glass.
In Empoli, the journalists had the opportunity to visit the Zignago Vetro glass plant. Starting with glass scrap (cullet) which is collected locally, the plant produces bottles and other glass containers for the local wine industry. Using scrap significantly reduces emissions from the plant. Its location, close to one of Italy’s major wine-producing regions, also ensures that emissions from transportation are minimised.
The tour continued at the Lamole di Lamole winery in Greve (Chianti), just 40 km from the Empoli plant. Here the journalists got to see the glass bottles produced at Zignago Vetro being filled with some of the very fine Chianti the winery is famous for. Naturally there was a tasting – this is Italy after all – the country where the relationship between glass, wine, and life itself is best enjoyed!
Since February 2010, Kansas City couple Zach Noland and his girlfriend Meghan Sundermeier have been attempting to live a zero-waste lifestyle. And to date they have been very successful. One of the easiest ways they have found to reduce their waste is to take their own glass jars and reusable cloth sacks to their local whole foods store. The couple simply fill the reusable containers with the products they need. They also buy their milk in glass bottles which can be returned and refilled.
The glass jars and cloth sacks also provide handy containers around the home. Noland’s cupboards hold cloth sacks and glass jars filled with dry goods and cereal. There are no cans, plastic bags or other packaging in sight. Glass containers are also reused in the refrigerator to hold leftovers. In a typical week, the couple produce less than a handful of waste which must be disposed of in the rubbish.
Noland and Sundermeier were inspired to try a zero-waste lifestyle by Béa Johnson who runs the Zero Waste Home blog. Johnson’s blog contains a wealth of tips and recipes for anyone interested in reducing their waste. They include buying in bulk, shopping at local farmers’ markets, and using natural cleaning products such as baking soda and vinegar.
Johnson believes that to successfully live a zero-waste lifestyle you need to follow the 4R’s approach: Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle only as a last resort. Of these, Sundermeier believes refusing excess packaging is the most important: “You have to refuse. That is the most important strategy. Refuse, refuse, refuse.”
Glass is the greenest packaging material according to a report by Chloé Hecketsweiler which was published in the French magazine L’Expansion late in 2011. Using five criteria (raw material cost, carbon footprint, recycling rates, impact on health and cost to consumers) Hecketsweiler sought to quantify which packaging material was the greenest using data relating the French market. Over all five criteria, glass packaging scores 17/25, well ahead of plastics at 13/25.
Glass Ahead in Recycling
On average, every French person adds 86 kilograms of household packaging to the waste stream each year. When comparing plastic and glass, Hecketsweiler notes that 75% of glass packaging containers are recycled in France, but that just 20% of plastic containers find their way to recycling centres. Hecketsweiler believes consumers find it easy to recycle glass as it simply needs to be sorted into clear and coloured glass. By comparison, there are many different types of plastic and it is impossible to treat each type in the same way.
Glass Reduces Emissions
Hecketsweiler notes that less energy is used and less CO2 is emitted if recycled glass is used to create new glass. However, she bases her emissions calculation on the use of 100% virgin materials and does not take into account the major progress manufacturers have already made to reduce the weight of bottles.
A European Life Cycle Assessment for glass bottle production shows that, on average, every tonne of recycled glass saves 670 kg of CO2. Increasing the amount of recycled glass in the furnace by 10% decreases energy use by 3%. When glass is recycled, there is no need to produce, process and transport the virgin raw materials or to transport them, so less fuel is used. Glass bottles can now be produced with up to 100% recycled content – infinitely. This is certainly not the case for plastics.
Glass is Healthy
An area where glass shines is in terms of its health properties. Bisphenol-A (BPA), a component of many plastics, has been found to disrupt the hormone system of human beings. Plastics can also contain phthalates or antimony. Baby bottles containing BPA have already been banned in the EU, and toxicologists have also raised concerns over the effects of phthalates and antimony. By contrast, glass is 100% inert – a major advantage for consumers.
Glass Protects Vital Resources
In terms of the expense of raw materials, Hecketsweiler points out that glass is made of natural ingredients which are found in abundance in nature. Glass container production efficiently uses resources and does not depend on oil. If renewable energy is available and secure, glass can be produced without the need for any fossil fuels.
By contrast, plastic is derived from oil. Around two kilograms of oil is required to produce one kilogram of PET plastic. Overall, the manufacture of plastics absorbs 4% of the world’s limited supplies of oil.
Glass Represents Real Value
While glass comes out ahead of plastics in most areas, the one area in which Hecketsweiler believes plastic can compete is price. However, her survey only covered two products in one French supermarket. As European consumers already know, most products are priced the same despite the packaging material used.
It is true that high quality products are often packaged in glass because it is the most reliable material in terms of taste preservation. Glass also guarantees a much longer shelf-life for the product, helping to reduce food waste in the supermarket and at home. That has to be good for both your purse and the planet!
Simplicity is the watchword at Sprout – a New York-based company which manufactures sustainable skincare products. So it’s only natural that when it came to design the packaging, Sprout chose clear glass bottles to show-off their wonderful range of products.
Every Sprout skincare creation is made in small batches, using locally sourced organic ingredients. To reinforce the personal commitment, each bottle is signed and dated by the person who created the batch. A simple label on the front identifies the brand and the list of ingredients – no E-numbers in small print here!
Sprout chose glass packaging for its skincare range, principally because of its inert nature – the glass does not react to the contents inside, ensuring that they remain harmless to the user. And they allow the natural colours of the ingredients to shine through – simply beautiful!
Waste from non-recyclable water containers is becoming a major issue, with a recent study showing that litter in the North Pacific Gyre has increased more than a hundred-fold in the past 40 years. This week members of the European Parliament called on the European Union to seek more environmentally friendly alternatives for water, such as recyclable or refillable glass bottles.
Refilling glass bottles when you are at work or home is an excellent solution and will help to reduce the waste circulating in the world’s oceans. While any glass bottle with a resealable lid can be utilised, innovative companies are coming up with designs for refillable bottles that look attractive and can be tailored to the owner’s own personality. Like all glass, the bottles can be recycled at the end of their life and they are free of the Bisphenol-A (BPA) and other chemicals that are found in some packaging materials.
Tap is Terrific is another range of reusable glass bottles which is made by Faucet Face. They come with a BPA-free cap and are dishwasher safe. When you buy four of the bottles, Faucet Face donates a Biosand filter to a family without access to potable tap water. The filter eliminates around 90 to 95% of the impurities, bringing fresh clean water to remote communities around the world.
