Popular Science: The Magical and Sacred Glass Product—Glass Packaging Containers (Glass Bottles and Jars)
When people think of glass, they often associate it with beauty, describing it in poetic, almost dreamlike language: Its crystal clarity refracts the world’s dazzling colors, captivating one’s senses; like morning dew catching the light, it is not just a window’s garment but a magician of light and shadow, transparent and reflecting the beauty of all things; like a person, its essence holds endless stories and purity… Yet, when you gently touch its water-like texture, you find a transparent body containing infinite tales.
Next, let’s explore the everyday glassware that is ever-present in our lives.
Glass Packaging Containers (Glass Bottles and Jars)
Glass Packaging Containers (Glass Bottles and Jars): Due to their excellent chemical stability, corrosion resistance, barrier properties, acid and alkali resistance, non-contamination of contents, superior airtightness, and inertness (meaning they don’t react with most chemicals), glass bottles and jars are indispensable primary packaging containers for the food, pharmaceutical, cosmetics, and chemical industries. Their transparency allows for easy inspection of contents, and they are both aesthetically pleasing and practical.
Glass Bottles in Daily Life: The most common type is made from soda-lime silicate glass. Examples include: various liquor and beverage bottles; condiment bottles for oil, salt, soy sauce, and vinegar; jars for canned goods (sweet, sour, salty, spicy); perfume, essential oil, and cosmetic bottles; as well as food storage jars and larger, specially shaped jars like those for pickling fruit or storing medicinal liquors.
Another type is made from borosilicate glass, primarily used for pharmaceutical glass packaging, chemical reagent bottles, high-end cosmetic bottles, and craft liquor bottles.
Brief Production Process: Batch preparation -> Melting (above 1500°C) -> Forming -> Annealing -> Inspection -> Packaging and storage. In terms of manufacturing techniques, glass bottles are generally divided into molded bottles (made directly in a mold) and tubular bottles (first made into a glass tube, which is then formed into a bottle, primarily used for pharmaceutical packaging).
Varieties of Glass Bottles: The variety is immense, ranging from small 1ml bottles to large ones over ten liters; from round and square to specially shaped and handled bottles; from colorless to transparent amber, green, blue, and black light-blocking (UV protection) bottles, to opaque opal glass bottles. For instance, beer, wine, oil, soy sauce, and vinegar are often packaged in amber, green, or blue glass. These colors provide up to 99.9% UV protection, effectively preventing sunlight from damaging the nutritional components of the contents. Combined with glass’s inert nature, this helps preserve the product’s premium flavor over time.
Quality Standards: Because glass bottles are closely related to food, drugs, and cosmetics, their quality is of utmost importance to the state and the public! National technical committees for standardizing daily-use glass, glass instruments, and food contact materials (specifically the sub-committee for glass and enamel products), along with industries for pharmaceutical packaging, chemicals, packaging, and commodity inspection, all place great emphasis on establishing and revising quality standards for glass bottles. Currently, the industry is governed by over 85 existing national and industry standards covering product specifications, testing, and inspection, strongly safeguarding public health and safety.
A Model for the Circular Economy: Glass bottles themselves can be recycled and reused (e.g., the well-known returnable beer bottle). Discarded glass can be remelted to create new glass without any loss of quality and without generating waste. Using recycled glass (cullet) not only enables circular use but also reduces energy consumption: adding 10% cullet to the raw material batch reduces melting energy consumption by approximately 2.5%. The cullet incorporation rate can exceed 80%. This combination makes the glass bottle industry a potential model for the circular economy. Currently, Europe leads in glass recycling, with a glass packaging collection rate of over 80%. 92% of the collected glass is effectively utilized, with 91% of that being used to produce new glass bottles. The EU plans to achieve a 90% collection rate by 2030. In recent years, China has also emphasized developing its circular economy, with a cullet recycling rate of around 50%. This requires broader societal attention and action. Through the joint efforts of the recycling industry, users, producers, and consumers, we hope to see waste glass recycling reach a new level.
With continuous technological advancements, such as the adoption of lightweighting (making bottles thinner and lighter), glass packaging has further overcome drawbacks like weight and fragility. Amid growing consumer pursuit of safe and healthy living, and even amidst today’s diverse packaging materials, demand for glass continues to grow year by year, remaining irreplaceable in many fields.
