Quality and Processing
Quality
Quality starts with responsible collecting of the glass and sorting it well. Awareness and training of collectors/suppliers, an organised maintenance service and customised collection cycles are very important. Storing the glass correctly and in an organised manner is one of the main conditions in order to start the recycling loop in an optimal way. Well-trained staff and state-of-the-art machinery give a very high quality final product.
Quality is like a chain: each link contributes to the final result.
All contributors in the chain of supply are expected to make play their part in ensuring the highest level of quality is consistently maintained throughout the glass collection and processing cycles.
Processing
The infeed of glass is stored in separate bays by colour (flint, green, amber, mixed) according to the respective collection system.
During the recycling process the various colour streams are treated separately as well.
The first phase is manual sorting where larger contaminants like PET bottles, plastic bags, newspapers, ceramics, stones, porcelain and other non-glass domestic waste are removed from the flow of glass.
The second phase is a soft crushing process to adjust the glass to the required cullet size for further treatment.
The third phase consists of removing all metals, ferrous as well as non-ferrous. This metal extraction is placed at several stages of the process.
The final fourth phase is the most complex: Optical processing. The cullet is separated into different flows according to cullet size. Different arrays of optical sorters remove ceramics, stone and porcelain from the flow. This system uses charged-couple device (CCD) cameras and compressed air valves. The cullet is then subject to optical-mechanical colour separation and by means of further CCD cameras which remove the off-colour cullet from the flow. This fully automated colour separation is merely a colour improvement of the collected packaging glass.
In between the different stages of the process, lighter parts such as labels, paper and plastics are separated from the glass by means of air-suction technology.
An experienced and professional team supervises and adjusts the process based on the results of the online quality control automatically controls the full process.
Finally highly modern and efficient processes and technologies lead to maximum recycling and high-quality finished products.