Background Glass is fundamentally a highly recyclable material and in recent years, new legislation and fiscal drivers have contributed to an increase in glass recycling across the EU. Much of this increase has been observed in the glass manufacturing industry, where recycled glass cullet (waste or broken glass) has increasingly been used as feedstock. This saves using virgin raw materials, and also reduces the glass industry’s energy consumption, and its carbon dioxide (CO2), particulate and nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions. However, the kinds of glass cullet that can be economically recycled are limited to certain types, such as flat glass and container glass (bottles and jars), since the composition and contamination of many types, such as cullet from end-of-life vehicles (ELV), television screens, lighting products and building scrap, can have a negative impact on final product quality. These types of waste glass are therefore removed before processing, and disposed of. With ever-increasing demand for higher quality cullet, unsuitable glass cullet bypasses the recycling stage and enters into landfill. Objectives The project’s principal objective was to demonstrate an innovative combination of technologies for significantly increasing the proportion and the variety of waste glass used for the manufacture of glass fibre insulation products. The project aimed to prove the recyclability of glass that is currently unsuitable for most glass manufacturing processes and therefore currently has to go to landfills. Such waste streams include cullet from end-of-life-vehicle (ELV) sources, television screens, lighting products and building scrap. In addition, the proposed process was to remove an intermediary step between processing cullet and glass fibre manufacturing, thereby reducing transport requirements. The applied system was expected to surpass current EU best available techniques (BATs), aiming to increase the percentage of contaminated waste glass used in glass fibre production from around 15% to over 60%. Results Unfortunately, the project had to terminate its work prematurely due to significant obstacles. However, trials were performed and continue to be carried out, demonstrating that using 60% cullet in glass fibre production is feasible. A variety of possible waste glass streams have been investigated so far. The objectives have only been met to a small degree so far – the beneficiary does hope to meet them in amended form (and at a larger scale) after the end of the LIFE project – though as yet there is no timescale for this. Successes 1. Various types of waste glass were investigated – for suitability in the process, for volume available and for economic viability. 2. Regular crushed bottle cullet and fine crushed cullet (from three suppliers) were studied in trial runs from February 2006 onwards. These trials showed good results with up to 60% cullet being used, and allowed various refinements to be made to the planned process. 3. The project laid a solid foundation of research into the subject, whose promising results mean there is much potential for the construction of a cullet processing plant to be built at some point in the future. Reasons for failure From the start of the project there were delays, which were a product of a change in circumstance for the beneficiary: a) The beneficiary expanded its operations in UK and abroad significantly, greatly reducing the available skilled manpower for the project. b) Increasing energy costs over the course of the 2005-6 period meant the beneficiary (a large organisation) wished to increase the percentage of cullet being used to reduce energy usage. c) Both a and b meant that the beneficiary management now required double the volume of cullet to pass into its South Wales operation, thus vastly changing the original plan. As well as needing a larger plant, the increased % would mean there would have to be a lower contaminant threshold, requiring further studies to be done and also causing further delays to work. From summer 2006 onwards, the project team was hit by two major issues that led to much greater delays: a) The Cwmbran plant was found to have exceeded its allowable sulphur emissions, and therefore had to work closely with the Environment Agency to try to bring these emissions down. This severely limited the trials that could be carried out. b) The chosen cullet supplier proved difficult to work with and did not supply on time or to the required quality standard.