Recycling glass

Glass is recyclable pretty much forever - throwing it away really is a waste!

You can recycle glass bottles and jars at more than 40 recycling sites across in North West Leicestershire - or on our kerbside collection service.

Glass needs to be kept separate from plastics, tins and cans, to do this please put them in the other red box (if you have more than one), if you've only got one red box, just order an extra box.

Where does it go?

Your glass is collected from our depot in Coalville by Cello Recycling who transport it to a glass container re-melt factory in Rotherham, South Yorkshire. Here it is separated from any paper, aluminium caps and other non-glass items, these are recycled locally. The glass is then processed into glass cullet (crushed glass). During the process, the glass is screened by size and colour separated via optical sorting technology.

The glass cullet is directly melted on site into new containers for use in the food, beverage and pharmaceutical industries.

What types of glass are recyclable?

All glass bottles and glass jars can be recycled.

Others forms of glass - such as pyrex, plate glass, mirrors etc - can't be recycled in the same way, because they have a different composition and can't go through the same process.

For example, pyrex is heat resistant and has a different melting temperature to a beer bottle. This can cause imperfections in the new glass.

I don't have space in my red box for glass

Ask us for a free extra red box!

Find out more about glass recycling: Waste Watch Information Sheet.