Year 6 visit to Frigoglass Company, Jebel Ali Free Zone
On February 7th, the Year Six children took a trip to Frigo Glass to find out more about how glass is recycled. As one of the participating schools in the EEG’s Glass Collection Drive, DESS has won prizes for its efforts to support the initiative and the children were keen to see the process for themselves. The visit is part of our current “Changing Materials” science topic and part of our continuing environmental awareness programme.
On arrival at the plant, the children were greeted by Mr. Samir, the plant manager, who then guided them through the stages of the process as they toured the factory.
The children were given earplugs and protective glasses to wear as they spent several minutes inside the noisy plant furnace building, watchingthe glass travelling along conveyor belts.
The children were amazed to see the huge glass ‘mountains’ where the process of sorting the collected glass begins.
The collected “cullet” (recycled) glass is first crushed on rollers and sorted, partly by hand, to separate the metal attachments and mixed colours.
If glass is ready-sorted at source, this will not be necessary. Coloured and clear glass is not recycled together; it is therefore helpful for the public to sort the coloured and clear glass before collection.
As the recycled glass is mixed with some new materials, it is all melted together at 1500°C into "gobs", which then pass through fast-moving moulds to create the shape requested by the customer. The shaped gobs are then filled with air to hollow them out and these moulded pieces are then cooled down as they pass further along a series of conveyor belts to bepacked and labelled, ready for delivery or export.
The children were amazed to find out that glass is 100% recyclable; every piece of glass is able to be recycled over and over again – greatly reducing the need to exploit more of the world's precious resources, reducing the energy needed in new glass production and releasing much less carbon dioxide into our atmosphere.
We very much hope that more and more people will take responsibility for their own rubbish, and help to collect and recycle
their glass to play an active role in helping our environment!Our thanks to Frigoglass Company for hosting us that morning, and to the EEG for its assistance in arranging the visit logistics for us.
Sue Le Boutillier
