We all are surrounded by glass in many different areas of our daily life, yet rarely do we realize that we are dealing with glass in that particular situation. Maybe more than in any other glass industry this is valid for container-glass. Even fewer people realize the high energetic effort that is put into a single beverage bottle. Energy consumption at the beginning of automated glass-container manufacturing was about 12.000 MJ per ton of molten glass. Today it is in the region of 4.000 MJ per ton of molten glass, sometimes less, depending on the cullet ratio. Melting glass is still an energy intensive process. The energy required to melt a typical 0.331 beverage bottle is in the range of 0.8 - 1 MJ, which equals roughly the energy content of 20ml of gasoline, which could fuel an efficient car for nearly half a kilometre distance.
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