This week I am going to be talking about glass #recycling at the University and what processes they go through with our contractor Viridor.
Now that our lovely @UKCStudent are back our glass recycling is as ever expected to increase (come on we all remember what it’s like to be a student!) and hopefully you are using our hard hat bottle openers that we have been giving out as freebies, please no tricks with your teeth!
According to a team of researchers from University College London (UCL), men between the ages of 16-24 drink 27.5 units of alcohol per week and women drink 17.2 units of alcohol per week (the guardian, 2013). If we tried to equate this to the number of wine bottles (an average of 10 units per alcohol in each bottle of wine) per academic year this would be a roughly 69 bottles of wine drunk per person and if you think we have around 5,500 students on campus this would be a staggering 381,067 wine bottles collected per year! That doesn’t even consider glass jars used in cooking sauces or jars of our good old love it or hate it food Marmite! No wonder why in the academic year 2015-2016 that nearly 794 tonnes of glass was recycled from campus and with a tonne equalling the size of a small car this would be more than the multi-story car park in Canterbury Whitefriars that can hold 530 vehicles.
With all this alcohol being consumed we’ve got to make sure that we are being careful, there is a walking taxi service that is run by Campus Security where you can book for a trained security guard to walk you home after a night out in the venue, and you are always always advised that it is necessary to never leave your drink unattended even just for a second and if a handsome stranger is buying you a drink make sure you go to the bar with them. It’s always a good idea to make sure that you go out with a group of friends and don’t wander off by yourself, safety is in numbers! Enough of me lecturing you, let’s get back to what happens to the glass from campus…..
All glass bottles and jars can be #recycled on campus, you don’t need to take the lids off or remove the paper label that’s round the outside, just make sure that they are empty (or as good as) and place these into the glass recycling bins which you can find in all accommodation bin compounds, map available here. Each of the bins have a sticker on which shows that they are for glass only. Our waste contractor Viridor then comes and collects these bins and take them to a Materials Recovery Facility where they are sorted into colours and broken down into different sizes so that they can recycled into different products, large glass pieces are burnt down and remade into glass bottles and smaller pieces are used for a variety of products such as road aggregate and building materials. Watch this short video from Viridor to learn more, I have also made this short sketch video about what to do with your glass on campus.
That’s all from me for today, so remember drink sensibly and recycle your glass!!! For more information please send us a tweet @UniKentRecycle or visit our website www.kent.ac.uk/recycling