2023-08-10 06:30:38
The Arc France group is launching new ranges of black glass products. Did you know that this type of glass comes from the recycling of internal scrap and breakage at production plants? Interview.
Tableware is still excluded from the national sorting guidelines for packaging. However, manufacturers are optimizing the recycling of scrap and scrap from their processes in order to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. With this in mind, the Arc France group is launching new ranges of black glass products on the market. We take this opportunity to take stock of black glass, its manufacturing process and its interest in the circular economy.
The group has four factories dedicated to tableware around the world: in France, the United Arab Emirates, China and the United States. It employs some 7,800 people, including 5,000 in France. The Arques site is sized for a production of 215,000 tonnes. Valentin Singlit is director of strategy and glass methods, in charge of the teams that manage the fusion of the furnaces and of the workshop that prepares the raw materials to be placed in the furnaces. He explains to us the interest of black glass to recycle scraps and breakages that are commonplace in the glass industry.
Engineering techniques: During the production of glass, falls and breakage are relatively frequent, why?
Valentin Singlet : Scraps and breakage account for about a third of production. There are rejects because of defects, but especially processes. In particular, the pressé-soufflé is used to make goblets or stemmed glasses. Some of the glass is used in the process, but is cut and removed in the final article. Almost all of this scrap will be reinjected into the furnaces. Black glass makes it possible to recycle the part that cannot be returned directly to the ovens.
To understand, you have to take a quick look at the production chain. To put it simply, we melt the glass, then optionally we color it and finally we shape it. It can also receive a decoration on its outer surface. In the art of the table, we have a higher quality level of glass than that of the bottle, whether in color or discoloration. Pollution by coloring oxides cannot therefore be afforded. Once a colored or decorated glass has been made, it is therefore not put back into the transparent glass furnace, but will be used to make black glass.
How is black glass made?
The black glass consists of 70% crushed colored glass from production, 20% virgin material and 10% colorant. The dye is manganese oxide. This 70/20/10 ratio is the balance between the chemistry of the glass, our deposit and the concentrations of the raw materials. This makes it possible to recycle all the colored glass on the surface or in the mass. This manufacturing process reduces the carbon impact by approximately 10% compared to the production of transparent soda lime glass. Indeed, the cullet has already been pre-melted and therefore requires less energy to melt.
Why aren’t we sorting tableware at the national level?
The risk is to have an amalgam between the different table glassware: soda-lime, fluosilicate, porcelain, crystal borosilicate… This risks creating pollution in the circuits. Historically there was lead pollution in the tableware sector, which is no longer the case today. Indeed, 24% lead crystal is increasingly disappearing from shelves.
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