Through a series of promotional activities including new label and logo for the glass bottle recycling bins, incentive schemes and guided tours of recycling plants.
Prior to these policies taking place, the majority of waste glass beverage bottles in Hong Kong were sent to landfill. However, with limited space in the existing landfills which will likely be used up before 2020, the urgency to reduce and recycle all types of waste is apparent.
Challenge
Through an open tender the EPD appointed glass management contractors (GMCs) to undertake collection and treatment services for waste glass containers, improve the recovery rate of glass containers and ensure they are used in a sustainable way. These 2 GMCs are Hong Kong Glass Reborn Ltd for the Kowloon District and Baguio Waste Management & Recycling Limited for the Hong Kong Island and New Territories regions. The 5 years contract require the GMCs to take over the previous voluntary glass bottle recycling programmes, providing free glass container collection and treatment services across the territory.
The contract for Baguio Waste Management & Recycling Ltd commenced in November 2017 and Krysteline Technologies are pleased to have provided a comprehensive container glass processing plant which incorporates its patented our Implosion technology enabling them to process their glass ready for reuse.
Solution
Baguio chose the Krysteline Imploder glass processing plant for refining their glass ready for reuse because of the Imploder’s ability to separate the glass from no non-glass, the Imploder also allows for the flexibility to produce cullet and sands suitable for an assortment of purposes E.g. remelt, powder, gree sands, refined aggregates and even, foam glass. Therefore utilising 100% of the waste glass collected.
Krysteline glass processing plants are very easy to run and maintain with minimal down time, which was one of the many reasons Baguio chose to work with Krysteline. Additionally Krysteline’s relatively short delivery capability was able to have the entire glass processing ready to ship within 10 weeks of order.
Recycled glass sand produced from the Baguio glass processing plant are being used initially as a river sand substitute in creating low CO2 paving bricks. The uneconomically high cost of shipping remelt quality cullet to China to be remade into glass bottles negated this opportunity. The close proximity of an eco-paver manufacturer to the new Krysteline glass processing plant willing to incorporate glass sand within the paving bricks offers a significant overall reduction in CO2 compared to traditional materials.
Success
Since the scheme launched recycling of glass containers in Hong Kong has increased. Secretary for the Environment Mr Wong Kam-Sing stated that “Overall, following the commencement of GMC services the total amount of waste glass containers collected in 2018 increased by about 45% compared with 2017”
The Krysteline glass processing plant for Baguio Waste Management & Recycling Ltd based in Hong Kong is now operational at the plants maximum capacity of 20 hours a day, 7 days a week and processes approx. 53,000 tonnes of waste glass per year.
Terence Wong, Managing Director of Baguio said “we have been absolutely delighted with the Krysteline glass processing plant. We have operated the plant for a year now and experienced minimal operational downtime. Krysteline’s knowledge and understanding of the marketplace what a huge factor in us selecting them as a partner. We look forward to working with Krysteline more as we develop the market and opportunities for recycled glass in our region”.
Picture credits: Photo by Florian Wehde on Unsplash
