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From shared moments with all the family around one table to celebrations of life’s biggest milestones, glass is there for all the moments that matter – no matter how big or small. And you can also make the most of glass: recycle and give glass a new endless life.
So join us in celebrating the International Year of Glass, and celebrate a product that’s been by our side through the ages. Choose glass. Choose tomorrow, today.
Glass is timeless. That’s what makes the world’s most loved packaging, yesterday and today, the very best option for tomorrow. Made of natural and inert materials – sand, soda ash and limestone – glass is a formula that’s worked its magic for thousands of years.
Today, 8 in 10 bottles are collected for recycling. The endless lives of glass mean the bottle of wine you’re saving for later may have started life as a six-pack of beer, a jar of jam, or even a pot of face cream. Drop it off at the bottle bank, and it could be back on the shelves living a whole new life in as little as a month, in perfect quality. That’s why glass makes for healthier people and a healthier planet.
For close to four millennia, glass has been a touchpoint of celebration, commerce, culture, and science for societies around the world – its footprint shaping local communities stretching from today’s efforts to forge sustainable furnaces, to production lines in industrial towns, to the secretive medieval guilds of Venice’s Murano, all the way back to the Romans’ discovery of craft glassblowing.
That’s why in spring 2021, the UN designated 2022 as the International Year of Glass, to reflect on the past, present and future of an iconic material.
Read more about the IYOGAn ancient material with a rich cultural heritage, glass is more important to our modern life than ever before. It’s healthy for people and planet alike, it’s versatile and it’s easily innovated upon.
That’s what makes glass a hidden gem in achieving a more sustainable future. So join us in celebrating the International Year of Glass this year – because choosing glass means choosing a better future. It’s a promise to protect health – of the planet, of people, of society – so that we thrive together for generations to come.
Join the celebrationsMade from a combination of natural materials and as much recycled glass as we can get, glass is simple and doesn’t pollute the environment. Glass also has endless lives! The same packaging can be reused dozens of times without any loss of quality, and recycled again and again into new bottles, jars and pots – reducing waste, cutting CO2 emissions and saving on raw material.
What’s more, Europe has the world’s highest glass recycling rates at 80%, and by endlessly recycling this collected content into new production, we can save a massive 9 million tonnes of CO2 per year. If that’s not an incentive to take a trip to the bottle bank, we don’t know what is.
In a nutshell, yes. As an inert, everyday packaging material made from natural ingredients, glass is sustainable and safe. Glass needs no other chemicals or plastic linings to protect our favourite products – it’s a single-layered packaging material, and one of the only packaging materials with no synthetic chemicals that could interact with food or drink.
Glass acts as a barrier to external agents, meaning products are safely preserved, even once opened. That’s why you can rely on glass to keep products fresher for longer, keeping you healthier and tasting or smelling just as good as intended.
In many different ways! You can join the celebrations on social media using the #YearofGlass or #IYOG2022, and share how glass marks the moments that matter in your life. You can download our IYOG toolkit below, and discover why glass continues to appeal to generations of people.
And be sure to check the calendar of the latest events on the IYOG 2022 website: from historical exhibits, to art competitions aimed at school students, to scientific research on glass supporting sustainable growth in cities and towns, there’s an IYOG event in every part of the world. In short, wherever you are and however you want to celebrate, there’s sure to be something that appeals to you.
Right now, yes. Glass is healthy, reusable and infinitely recyclable without losing quality, but there’s no denying that glass production has traditionally been an energy-intensive industry. But we believe that by addressing our carbon emissions, we can offer a fully climate-neutral packaging that’s also fully circular.
We’re taking rapid strides to become carbon neutral and maximize our use of recycled content, with projects like the Furnaces for the Future or the Close the Glass Loop platform achieving significant results. We know that by driving forward the transition to a resource-efficient and low-carbon economy, we’ll be able to ensure that glass manufacturing can continue to thrive sustainably for generations to come.
With the International Year of Glass putting glass in the spotlight like never before, discover why glass is the choosing tomorrow, today – now, and for generations to come.
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