Some of the most attractive decoration items are colored glass
bottles. You can get these bottles with holding capacity of as low as 10ml and as high as five liters. They
are great as utility items as well as for aesthetic needs.
Glass, surprisingly, is a very old item which has lasts over 12
millennia till date. Today the glass making has been automated to a great extent as a result some manual
techniques like blowing to get it in shape have been stopped. With machines churning out bottles, it is not
surprising that there are thousands and thousands of new bottles being manufactured daily.
The best part about glass is that it is recyclable and that the cost of using
recycled glass for making new one is lesser that starting with the raw materials. As a result many commercial
applications recycle glass making the whole process very ecofriendly.
We use glass bottles in many different ways and forms. On an average thirteen million
bottles are recycled daily in the US. These bottles are collected from the special bins places all over the
country. Generally the glass used in food and beverage industry is used for recycling.
Colored glass bottles holding liquids can break when dropped or shocked. This is
because the liquid inside can act as a hammer and break the glass. Making glass bottles is very lengthy process with many intermediate steps. Typically
the raw materials are melted and blown into shapes and form. These are them smoothed and checked manually and with
laser for defects. The perfect bottles are then shipped.
Some of thecolored glass bottles are laminated for
safety reasons. The process applies a layer of plastic around the glass. The idea here is that when the glass
breaks on impact the plastic can contain the spread of the pieces and slivers. However well the temperature and
environment of the manufaturing unit is controlled, the glass bottles can get cooled unevenly which creates stress
and may cause them to break. By a process of annealing these stress points are nullified to make the glass
tougher.
