Glass – Resource Circular Economy: Opportunities to Reduce Waste Disposal Across the Supply Chain

Glass is a hard substance that may be transparent or translucent and is brittle in nature. The use of glass in the building sector has a long history, however, with new technological advances, its application has become very broad. glass is now being used in the building industry as insulation material, structural component, external glazing material and cladding material. In infrastructural projects, the application of glass includes but is not limited to sound barriers, tunnels, ingredients for road surface such as asphalt and insulators. Australia generated 1,078,831 tonnes of waste glass in all waste streams in the period 2016-17. However, the construction industry is not a significant contributor to glass waste generation; from the total glass waste, only 0.62% came from the C&D waste stream. Despite a higher level of recycling of glass waste relative to landfilling in all waste streams, landfilling is very prominent in the C&D waste stream. The average landfilling rate of glass waste in the C&D stream is 82.3%. To improve this situation, there are opportunities for minimising landfilled waste throughout the glass material lifecycle that are discussed in this report. While there is an established market for some applications of glass waste, there are some other areas of application that need further investigation. The glass waste market is currently not efficient due to several reasons that are reviewed in this report. Economic analysis of using recycled glass with all the issues attached to it, including contamination and the undesirable marketability of recycled glass, an economic incentive for recyclers as well as manufacturers in Australia is not currently present. The main reason is the low-cost overseas outsourcing of glass materials. However, with promising results from new national and jurisdictional initiatives, it is likely that the current trends in the market will change for the better.