O-I's Sustainability Glass Recycling video
A short video produced by O-I which highlights just some of the many benefits glass packaging offers.
Owens Illinois (O-I) has met with the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) after an anti-glass campaign was launched by the Virginia DEQ encouraging residents not to recycle their glass packaging. Its Global Government Affairs team met with DEQ officials, who were surprised to learn of the campaign, saying it goes against their policy.
Since the meeting, glass-to-glass recycling in Fairfax County is back on the rise. Randy Burns, VP of Global Government Affairs & Legal Legacy Strategy at O-I, Mike Smaha, manager of US Government Affairs attended. Representatives from the Glass Packaging Institute and Strategic Materials (SMI) also joined them.
Currently residents of the county take their glass to large purple bins around the county, where it is then picked up and processed by SMI.
SMI then sells the processed cullet to various manufacturers, including O-I. It is then used in O-I’s Danville and Toano plants in Virginia, which produces 3.6 million glass containers per day.
To date, the purple bin campaign in Northern Virginia has led to over four million pounds of clean glass being recycled back into the circular economy.
