What a smashing idea: General Demolition’s commitment to glass recycling
General Demolition is leading the charge in sustainable practices by partnering with Saint-Gobain to carry out effective glass recycling in our demolition projects. These efforts reduce landfill waste while contributing to a circular economy, demonstrating a real glass-act in the industry.
At General Demolition, our commitment to sustainable practices is unwavering. This year, we’ve put a new material under the recycling spotlight: glass, a resource that is available in abundance on demolition sites but has, for too long, gone to waste.
Almost a quarter of a million tonnes of glass goes to landfill every year, but nearly all of that could be reused in the manufacture of new glass. Today’s society is becoming more focused on improving carbon footprints. Reflecting on this, we quickly realised that not recycling end-of-life glass from demolition sites seems like a glass-half-empty type story.
General Demolition believes that the current lack of glass recycling from demolition sites represents a missed opportunity. For every tonne of cullet (smashed glass) recycled, 1.2 tonnes of raw materials are conserved, energy use is reduced by 30%, and 700kg of CO2 emissions are avoided.
But we couldn’t make this sustainable shift alone, that’s why we called in glass giant Saint-Gobain…
Our partnership with Saint-Gobain
Working closely with Saint-Gobain, we recently completed our first glass recycling project at the appropriately named 21 Glasshouse Street in Soho, successfully diverting an incredible 36 tonnes of toughened, laminated and secondary glass for recycling.
To increase the amount of cullet used in its new glass production, Saint-Gobain has set an ambitious target of 50% cullet by 2030. In theory, it could utilise 100% cullet, but acquiring enough material is a challenge—here’s where General Demolition steps in. The demolition industry has long recycled raw materials like steel, wood, and concrete—so why not glass?
Contamination challenges
Recycling glass is by no means a straightforward process. It’s not as simple as smashing it up and putting it into a bag for Saint-Gobain to collect. Glass is very sensitive to contamination, especially from materials like nickel.
Implementing his expertise, Richard Calcutt, Saint-Gobain’s technical project manager, conducted a thorough inspection of the 21 Glasshouse Street site, and produced a report identifying which types of glass could be recycled (such as plate, toughened, and laminate) and which could not (like fire-rated glass or borosilicate). He also advised on safe ways of breaking up the glass, the importance of using nickel-free cutting blades – and outlined why it was necessary to segregate each type of glass into its own custom one-tonne cullet collection bag.
If Saint-Gobain detects even a small number of contaminants in a one tonne bag – the whole lot is rejected. Therefore, it’s crucial to maintain strict oversight during the sorting process to ensure our recycling efforts aren’t shattered.
A cracking performance
Understanding the challenges at hand, the General Demolition team warmly embraced the concept, knowing it would make a real impact when it comes to sustainable practices. Handling new processes with professionalism, the team carefully reduced the glass sheets of the project’s balustrading and office partitioning to manageable sizes and segregated it all into appropriate bags. Saint-Gobain’s specialist transport team then collected the glass and transported it to their multi-million-pound purpose-built cullet processing plant in Eggborough, Yorkshire.
“There’s a proactive energy within the General Demolition team,” shared Richard. “Its collaborative spirit shone throughout the process, as the team eagerly learned and adapted to carefully segregating and bagging the various types of glass.”
Worth the pane?
What are the economics, you ask? Does recycling glass make financial sense? Well, yes – and no.
While the payments from Saint-Gobain didn’t fully cover the additional time spent on breaking down and sorting the glass, the significant financial benefit comes from avoiding landfill costs, leading to real savings.
“We place sustainable practices at the core of our activities,” said George Stainton, managing director at General Demolition. “We view the materials on our sites not as waste products, but as opportunities to contribute to the circular economy. Partnering with Saint-Gobain Glass and the Glass Forever Programme was a natural extension of our work.”
As with any new venture, General Demolition and Saint-Gobain are starting small and learning along the way. However, it’s crystal clear that the debut project at 21 Glasshouse Street has been a solid success and will be followed by others. In fact, it’s not hard to imagine that carefully recycling glass will become standard practice on all sites in the not-too-distant future.
