Morley Glass is aiming to recycle more post-consumer glass and supporting more local good causes than ever after installing new machinery capable of trebling its capacity to process waste glass collected from Uni-Blinds installers.
The new plant its HQ and factory near Leeds replaces its original ‘Crush’ machinery, which has been retired after two years of service. The new machine is designed to be smarter and more productive through automation, extracting a larger amount of annealed glass out of the frame.
This eliminates some of the more time consuming and labour-intensive stages of the glass recycling process to enable larger volumes to be handled. Through a process of separation and crushing, the glass is turned into cullet which can then go straight into the manufacture of new glass, whilst spacer bars and any other materials are channelled off into a separate waste stream.
This first stage recycling process is a joint initiative between Morley Glass and Saint-Gobain Glass whereby recycled glass cullet is collected in half tonne bags for use as a raw material in the production of new glass. More than 670 tonnes of glass cullet has been produced since the initiative started in 2019, saving around 199,000 tonnes of CO2, or the equivalent of 332 ‘energy years’ for an average UK household.
Morley Glass ensures the value of the recycled glass cullet can be utilised to fund environment initiatives across West Yorkshire through its GreenVision Fund. This enables local organisations involved in environmental improvement and green micro initiatives to benefit from individual grants of £500 to support the work they do.
MD Ian Short said: “We’re thrilled that we can now handle three times the amount of recycled glass that we could previously, helping the industry take another important step forward in terms of sustainability. But equally important will be our increased ability to support more green initiatives than ever as the size of our GreenVision Fund grows with recycling volumes – it’s a win-win.”
Pictured, l to r: Kevin Murphy, General Manager and Lee Glover, Batch Plant and Cullet Recycling Manager, with the new automated glass recycling machinery.
