What to do with....

[Arch]

...10 tonnes of coloured glass bottles.

I got to work today to hear that the price of coloured glass has collapsed. So the skipful we would normally get money for, will cost us to get removed and emptied. (We think it's partly due to the push in 2010 to get recycling for everyone, UK wide - good for recycling, but the market is flooded with coloured glass, which wasn't worth a lot to start with). We have to keep collecting it, of course, but it's bit demoralising lugging it back to base knowing that every bottle will cost us...

Anyway, we were talking at lunchtime about what to do - pay up and have it collected by our usual merchant, store it onsite and hope the price picks up, or have it picked up by a more local firm, who will charge less (but aren't very reliable...) Eventually, as usually happens, the suggestions got silly. Someone said we should get one of those kits for turning bottles into tumblers and vases and sell them - although the maximum market is probably about 7. Or melt them down into decorative glass bricks. Fine for green, and those blue Bombay Sapphire gin bottles, but will anyone want brown?

Someone else suggested digging a big hole in the land and filling it with them. We could call it... landfill! (Especially ironic, as St Nicks used to be a landill tip).

So come on folks. Imaginative/daft uses for a lot of old wine and beer bottles please!

 

[Night Train]

I remember 'It's not easy being green' on TV with Dick Strawbridge.
In one episode he built a glass house in his garden and made a heat store in the ground to keep it warm over night. The heat store was an insulated hole in the ground filled with crushed glass pellets and the heat at the top of the glass house during the day was 'pumped', by a fan in pipe, into the glass pellets. At night the heat stored in the glass pellets was released back into the glass house to keep it warm

To get the crushed class he hired a mobile glass crusher and then found good reason for a pub crawl to collect the bottles to throw in it.


I am sure many years ago we exported waste glass to South America where they crushed it and then sold it back to us as an alternative to pea gravel for designer gardens.

 

[meenaghman]

Crush it then mix it with tar. Supposed to be really durable road surface. What about sand paper factories..or crushing for fine sand blasting

 

[661-Pete]

"10 tonnes of coloured glass bottles.....hanging on the wall lying in the skip,
10 tonnes of coloured glass bottles..... lying in the skip,
And if one tonne of coloured glass bottles ..... should accidentally get recycled,
There'll be 9 tonnes of coloured glass bottles..... lying in the skip......"

Sorry

 

[TheDoctor]

Keep them, and try to get into the Guinness Book of Records for the longest song ever.
'One hundred and twenty seven thousand green bottles, and twenty four thousand brown bottles, and four hundred and twenty three blue bottles,
Standing on the wall'

And so on.

Bugger, cross-posted...

 

[snorri]

You could perhaps construct a new office, or tearoom or........... building to store bottles in. http://www.designswan.com/archives/house-made-by-bottle-recycling-at-its-best.html

 

[Hover Fly]

I take it that's for mixed coloured? I thought brown glass was still worth something in Britain, with green worth next to nought, because no-one makes green bottles in the UK, (in the past, they do now, because they had to use the wine-bottle glass for something).

 

[fossyant]

Eureka.......... moment...........

Why is it, most times you get a 'visit' it's either clear glass or summat else, never have my tyres been slashed by coloured glass........

There be a moment ? Coloured glass everywhere, cos it won't slash my tyres ?




Sorry it's Friday, non serious stuff, ?

Really odd about coloured glass recycling, China waste exports I expect....... ???? Sorry state ?

 

[Piemaster]

Crush it then mix it with tar. Supposed to be really durable road surface. What about sand paper factories..or crushing for fine sand blasting

There's (most of) the answer. Two birds with one stone solution, Arch gets shot of the glass and Yorks potholes magically disappear. With the trike and a bit of imagination you could go along collecting glass and filling potholes at the same time so not even any need to store it.

 

[Lisa21]

Refill them...........you will soon forget that you have a problem once you start emptying them again..............

 

[Arch]

You could perhaps construct a new office, or tearoom or........... building to store bottles in. http://www.designswa...t-its-best.html

Wow! I like that. Especially the star shaped bottle bases on the walls.

I'll have to check about the difference in colour - we could separate colours but it would start to cause problems with storage, having different skips.

I did once meet a chap who specialised in knapping stone tools, and he said you can also knap glass into axe or arrowhead shapes (just as you can knap obsidian, which is only natural glass). He said Bombay Sapphire bottles are very good, being flat sides, and a pretty colour. I've never tried it though.

 

[threebikesmcginty]

Make a building with them. Saw one at the CAT in Wales - very cool!

 

[dellzeqq]

this isn't a happy story. Recycling glass doesn't save a great deal of energy. Quite why we've made it such a big deal I've no idea. Most coloured glass goes in to road surfacing rather than new bottles.

Did we once take pop bottles back for re-filling? Or was that milk bottles?

Oh - and aluminium recycling is a crock as well. Sorry.

 

[Arch]

this isn't a happy story. Recycling glass doesn't save a great deal of energy. Quite why we've made it such a big deal I've no idea. Most coloured glass goes in to road surfacing rather than new bottles.

Did we once take pop bottles back for re-filling? Or was that milk bottles?

Oh - and aluminium recycling is a crock as well. Sorry.

I agree that recycling glass the way we do is rubbish. In Scandinavia they take bottles back and get a deposit back on them, just like we used to with both pop and milk. Much more efficient. But we're a rather small organisation to change the whole country's way of thinking... Although we may have to try!

What's your beef with Alu recycling? I know we use Aluminium rather stupidly - drinks cans don't have to be Al, it's a bit of a waste of a finite resource that is horribly dirty and difficult to refine. But better to recycle them now they are made, than just bury them, surely? I heard a figure on the radio some time back (just after the terrible Hungarian sludge flood) that the amount of cans buried in landfill in the US, every three months, would be enough to build the domestic air fleet. Madness.

 

[Arch]

To get the crushed class he hired a mobile glass crusher and then found good reason for a pub crawl to collect the bottles to throw in it.

We've discussed reducing the volume in the skip - we can get another 5 tonnes in and still get it picked up. Not having a crusher, and being old fashioned, we were thinking of sledgehammers.

It's amazing how robust bottles can be, when you try to break them. When a skip is still fairly empty, I like to stand on the steps and throw bottles one at a time at a single bottle - it usually takes three or four direct hits before it shatters.

On the other hand, fumble one while collecting, on the day you'd forgotten the dustpan and brush, and there are three people watching, and it'll smash to bits before it even hits the floor....