COME Saturday mornings, drive or walk on the streets in the townships and see how the places are littered with broken beverage glass bottles especially alcoholic ones.
In other instances near some bottle stores or night clubs, you would find heaps of broken glasses of beverage bottles uncollected.
Sometimes, you see some people after finishing a bottle of beer; they indiscriminately throw or break it on the tarmac for whatever reasons best known to themselves.
This is period of the year is even worse because of the increased intake of the alcoholic beverage through the country.
The environmental impact of glass is, however, more lucid than completely clear.
Beverage container litter can be dangerous to people and animals.
People stepping on broken glass beer bottles can sustain deep cuts.
Livestock can be maimed or even killed by beverage container litter, either by stepping on broken cans and glass bottles, or by ingesting sharp pieces of containers that end up in their feed.
This can also happen when a farm combine working along a roadside inadvertently “harvests” littered bottles and cans that have been tossed out of car windows.
Wildlife is equally susceptible to broken glass injuries, and marine birds in particular are prone to mistake littered plastic bottle caps as food.
Unable to digest or excrete them, the birds gradually starve to death this is according to the first of the Book-Glass Beverages ‘Bottles Our Environment’.
Therefore, instead of endangering the environment, glass can be recycled and create more employment opportunities for the local people.
Moreover, it is not only beverage bottles that are available as raw material, but also from many household goods that are made of glass when they are broaken.
There are unmatched environmental benefits that can be realised by recycling glass containers.
According to Contain Recycling Institute, recycling glass is easy, as glass containers returned for recycling help to make new glass bottles and jars.
The recycling glass containers provides for unmatched production efficiencies and significant environmental benefits.
The process of recycling glass has big environmental payoffs as it saves raw materials, lessens demand for energy, and cuts carbon dioxide emissions.
For every six tonnes of recycled container glass used, a tonnes of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, is reduced.
A relative 10 per cent increase in cullet reduces particulates by eight per cent nitrogen oxide by four per cent, and sulphur oxides by 10 per cent.
The container and fibre glass industries collectively purchase 3.2 million tonnes of recycled glass annually, which can be re-melted and repurposed for use in the production of new containers and fibre glass products.
The recycling lessens the demand for energy.
Energy costs drop about two to three per cent for every 10 per cent cullet used in the manufacturing process.
Glass recycling is a closed-loop system, creating no additional waste or by-products because it consists mainly of silica, which is a natural raw substance like sand.
It will unlikely pollute the environment or affect human health and thus can easily be reused and recycled.
Glass is widely accepted as a recyclable material internationally.
There are also applications which turn waste glass into building materials, concrete and paving applications, in place of sand and other natural resources.
Glass is not waste but resource.
This is according Prof. C.S. Poon of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, one of the pioneers in Hong Kong conducting research on the potential applications of glass cullet in the construction industry.
In 2004, he succeeded in substituting natural river sand with glass cullet for the production of paving blocks.
A cullet is a recycled broken or waste glass used in glass-making.
Through on-going research, his subsequent findings have led to better performance eco-pavers suitable for wider uses in construction works.
Not all the waste glass can be recycled in the same processes, however, glass products such as lamps, computer monitors or television screens may contain lead, mercury or other hazardous substances, which needs prior detoxification before recycling.
Due to different physical properties, other glass materials such as tempered glass and glass cookware should not be mixed with ordinary glass bottles for recycling.
This cannot be done without Government intervention as glass has low commercial value, lead to glass recycling which will in turn provide new opportunities for the environmental industry and in turn provide green jobs, reduce the burden on landfills.
Glass is non-combustible and is not suitable for any other treatment or disposal methods reduce the demand for other construction materials, such as river sand.
Some of the side-products will have considerable impact on the environment, stimulate behavioural change in source separation of used glass beverage bottles, and catch up with many other jurisdictions which have already adopted forceful measures to deal with waste glass
problems.
Therefore, in Zambia where job opportunities are still scarce, establishing a recycling plant could come in hand because glass has low commercial value.
Attracting investment in the recycling industry should be one of the priorities on country’s development agenda because it has the potential to create wealth through job creation.
Giving incentives to would be investors especially local ones to set a plant could be a brilliant idea.
I end today; until next week, but remember to enjoy alcoholic beverages responsibly!
ENVIRONMENTAL TIP: Did you know that it takes approximately one million years for glass to decompose. Actually, it’s one of the longest-lasting man-made materials.
The New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services estimates that it takes 1 million years for a glass bottle to decompose in the environment, with conditions in a landfill even more protected.
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