October 12, 2025
Glass Sustainability: Recycling
In this video Faidra Oikonomopoulou & Telesilla Bristogianni explain that while glass is 100% recyclable in theory, in practice, successful closed-loop recycling is largely limited to the container industry (bottles and jars). For other glass products, like architectural and automotive glass, recycling rates are very low, with most post-consumer waste being downcycled or landfilled. The main barriers are technical, such as contamination from coatings and chemical incompatibility between different glass types, and logistical, including the difficult disassembly of complex products like windows. The video contrasts the high recycling rate of glass bottles in the EU (76%) with the minimal recycling of post-consumer float glass from buildings (under 1%). Solutions proposed include investing in new recycling methods like casting, establishing better collection facilities, implementing tracking systems for building materials, and designing products for disassembly from the start. The video concludes that overcoming these barriers is key to unlocking the full potential of glass recycling. The video was produced by the Open GLASSroom project. Special thanks to Faidra Oikonomopoulou & Telesilla Bristogianni for contributing to the Open GLASSroom OER collection. The creation of these resources has been (partially) funded by the ERASMUS+ grant program of the European Union under grant no. 2022-1-DE01-KA220-HED-000089750. Neither the European Commission nor the project's national funding agency DAAD are responsible for the content or liable for any losses or damage resulting of the use of these resources.