TV adverts on recycling maintain that a recycled bottle saves energy. Is this correct?

Question

When I went on a conducted tour round a bottle making factory, they told me that more energy was required to use recycled glass than making new glass. They only allowed a proportion of recycled glass into each batch because of this.

Answer 1

Unfortunately the cleaning process, then recycling the item into raw material and then using the material to produce the new item uses 166% of the energy compared to using just raw material. However we are constantly developing new technologies and in 10 or 20 years this may be reduced to an almost equal amountof energy use.

This does not take into account collection of said material.

Answer 2

Recycling one ton of glass saves 1.2 tonnes of new raw materials. It saves the equivalent of 860-kilowatt hours of electricity or 18% of the energy needed to form new glass.

http://www.cityofgainesville.org/recycle...

Energy Saver

http://howtosaveenergy.blogspot.com

[e-mail]