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turing plant in Windsor, Colorado, about 50 miles north of Denver.

e Windsor plant is a massive and noisy place humming with activity. Walking through it requires safety glasses, steel-toe shoe covers, and ear plugs. e cullet from Denver is brought in by railcar at the east end of the facility, but Hippert says it’s not enough to meet the needs of the plant, so they have to use raw materials, soda ash, limestone, sand, and a little bit of alumina that are also brought in by train.

e materials are then conveyed inside the plant where two immense and very hot furnaces melt them into molten glass that ows into basins where it will eventually be molded into bottles. Bottles whirl through the plant on belts and ramps at a dizzying speed with incredible precision as computers track their progress, beginning as what looks like hot lava poured into molds to nished bottles that are cooled and then inspected. Freshly made bottles are then bundled up to go to Budweiser, Left Hand, and New Belgium, among other Colorado brewers, and they also ship bottles out of state. e plant runs around the clock, making about 3.5 million bottles a day.

Hippert said that using recycled material from old beer bottles saves energy, and a typical rule of thumb is that for every ten percent increase in cullet used in their batch formula, they can save about 2.5 percent energy. He also noted that by adding recycled content, they reduce the total amount of carbon dioxide emissions.

e energy savings could be much higher, and if it were up to Hippert, they would have a whole lot more cullet used at the Windsor facility.

eir goal at O-I is to try to run on 50 percent recycled content in the bottles they produce. But given low recycling rates in Colorado, they have to import glass cullet from recycled bottles from other states as far away as Oregon, which has had a bottle bill for over 50 years that pays a fee to customers to return their bottles.

So why doesn’t Colorado recycle well? Liz Chapman is the Executive Director of Recycle Colorado, the largest nonpro t in the state dedicated to education about and lobbying for recycling. She said that more than half of the glass that is taken o the shelf and could be recycled is thrown into land lls in Colorado. Chapman says Coloradans only recycle about 16 percent in total of what could be recycled—about half the national average. Many bottles end up in land lls because some places in the state don’t have adequate recycling options.

Chapman is quick to add that the bulk of the glass that’s not being recycled is not coming from residences but from many bars and restaurants that don’t have the time, space, or nances to recycle. However, there are some bars and restaurants that take sustainability seriously and train their sta .

Chapman said that there are places in the state unlike Denver that do not have the infrastructure to recycle anything including beer bottles. at contrasts with the fact, she says, that the state has a glass remanufacturing facility with the potential to create jobs and supply it with the recycled glass it needs. e recycling landscape is changing in the state after the legislature passed the Producer Responsibility Program for Statewide Recycling act last year. e bill imposes charges on rms that make bottles, cans, paper packaging, and food utensils to fund recycling around Colorado. e program is getting established by rst performing a needs assessment and hopes are it will be fully implemented in about three years.

Additionally, in the November 2022 election, Denver voters approved a measure that requires restaurants, o ce buildings, and apartments to o er recycling. at could mean any beer bottle has a chance for an everlasting life.