«Sibsteklo» plans to increase the supply of cullet by 20-25 percent

LLC "Siberian Glass" is expanding the geography of collecting glass waste for its own production needs: in the interests of the enterprise, LLC "Glass Recycling" (both companies are part of RATM Holding) opens bases for the acceptance of cullet in Irkutsk and Khabarovsk, as well as in Voronezh.

According to the Acting General Director of Sibsteklo LLC Anton Mora, locations were determined by the presence of transport corridors:

- For example, Khabarovsk - one of the largest logistics centers in the Far East - is connected with Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Komsomolsk-on-Amur, Vladivostok, Ussuriysk, Blagoveshchensk and Birobidzhan, Irkutsk - with Chita, Ulan-Ude and Kyzyl. Until the end of the year, another base will start operating in Eastern Siberia - in Krasnoyarsk. Thus, we expect to form an effective traffic of secondary raw materials to Novosibirsk from storage sites. And there the cullet will come from small and medium-sized suppliers (homeowners' associations and MKD management companies, cafes and restaurants, enterprises that operate landfills or sort MSW there, window manufacturers, etc.). For some of them, transportation of cullet is expensive, so we will pick it up ourselves. Somewhere, relying on agreements with regoperators on MSW management, we will install tanks for selective waste collection - glass fractions will be sent to our bases.

To improve the quality of recyclable materials, the sites organize the separation of cullet by color, as well as its primary preparation for remelting - corks, metal particles, organic matter will be removed.

“As a rule, it is unprofitable for so-called“ garbage ”companies to deal with cullet: in the absence of optical separators, manually removing glass fragments from mixed waste compressed in a garbage truck when moving to a landfill is a laborious and time-consuming process,” notes Anton Mor. “Taking into account transportation costs, glass collected by us in other regions will cost at least one and a half times less than that of intermediary firms. This, among other things, will help keep the prices of finished products down.

The economic and environmental agendas at Sibglass are closely interconnected. It is technologically more difficult to produce glass containers without cullet, using it, they improve the characteristics of glass. One ton of cullet replaces 1.2 tons of minerals. Since glass is recyclable an unlimited number of times, the rate of depletion of mineral reserves slows down. In addition, the melting point of cullet is not as high as a mixture of sand, soda and dolomite: every 10% of recyclable materials in the batch reduces energy consumption by 3%. As a result, carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere are reduced, and glass-making furnaces burn out not after 7-10 years, but after 10-15 years.

At present, Sibsteklo purchases on average about 3.5 thousand tons of cullet per month. During the year, 55 thousand tons of glass waste, including production ones, are melted in glass furnaces. According to forecasts, by September 2021, the supply of cullet to the enterprise should increase by a quarter. However, the ratio of cullet and natural components in the manufacture of glass containers will remain the same for now.

- In the first quarter of 2021, we plan to put into operation a new glass-making furnace with a capacity of 375 tons of glass melt per day, the productivity of glass complexes will increase by 25%, followed by the plant's need for cullet, explains Anton Mor.

According to him, the task for the next two years is to increase the share of cullet in the composition of raw materials from 25-30% to 40-45%, which will increase the efficiency of Sibstekl's economic activities and minimize the technogenic impact on the urban ecosystem.

Press service of RATM Holding

As you know, LLC "Siberian glass" (LLC "Sibsteklo") is a member of the "StekloSouz" Russia.