Environmental activities on glass in Japan

Abstract

In general, glass has been recognized as an environmentally friendly material. However, the production of glass requires a lot of heat energy, and the raw materials also emit CO₂ at the melting process. In fact, commercial glasses are not easy to recycle. In glass industry of Japan, various efforts have been made so far to reduce the environmental impact of glass. In this paper, not only glass manufacturing technologies but also glass recycling technologies were reviewed, and the future glass production technologies to achieve carbon neutrality were also introduced.