I’m Gwen Outen with the VOA Special English Development Report.
Recycling makes things like paper or glass or metal useful again.It means the resources that went into making them were not wasted.With glass, it is said that for every one thousand kilogramsrecycled, one thousand two hundred kilograms of raw materials aresaved. Recycling also means that communities have to deal with lesswaste.
The process of recycling can give things not only a new life but,in some cases, a different one. Glass bottles, for example, canbecome drinking glasses.
First, the base is removed from the bottle. Then the bottle isturned upside down and the neck is attached to the base. The usedbottle that would have been thrown away has now become a goodlooking drinking glass.
It is not easy to make this happen, though. The biggest problemis how to attach the base to the neck of the bottle turned upsidedown.
Two South African businessmen, Sean Penrith and Philip Tetley,looked for a large glass manufacturer that could do it. But they hadno luck. So they experimented for eight months. Many broken bottleslater, they found a way.
Their company, called Green Glass, won a Business of the Yearaward in nineteen ninety-four. It was voted among the best newbusinesses in South Africa. The inventors received worldwide patentrights to own the process they developed.
More recently, the Green Glass idea has expanded into markets inEurope and the United States.
Green Glass U.K. says on its Web site that it now makes onehundred fifty thousand glasses per year. The factory in Cornwall,England, employs ten people.
The company says it saves ninety percent of the energy normallyused to make recycled glass. The energy is saved because the glassis not melted. The glass is heated, however, to strengthen it.
The Green Glass process takes about three hours to make a bottleinto a drinking glass. The bottle goes through seven machines, alldesigned and built by the company itself. Broken bottles cannot beused. So Green Glass U.K. says it must find bottles anywhere it can.
Internet users can see how a drinking bottle becomes a drinkingglass at tradinggreen.co.uk.
This VOA Special English Development Report was written by GaryGarriott. I’m Gwen Outen.