You use glass bottles all the time, but do you ever wonder how it’s made?
Here’s the inside story on how a glass bottle is made.
The Ingredients
Glass is made from 4 main ingredients:
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sand
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soda ash
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dolomite
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limestone
The Glass Making Process
These ingredients are melted together at an extremely high temperature of 2,500° Fahrenheit. Then the mixture is cooled several hundred degrees to be molded into different shapes and sizes. Different ingredients are added to alter color. For example, glass mixed with iron sulphide will give it a brown hue.
To create a glass bottle, a molten glass bubble is used placed into a glass mold to create the desired shape.
The air pressure in the molten glass bubble forces the glass against the side of the mold. Once the glass cools and hardens, the mold is opened and a newly-made glass bottle removed.
Voilà!
Different Kinds of Glass and Their Ingredients
|
Soda Glass |
Lead glass |
Fiberglass and foam glass |
Borosilicate |
Colored glass |
|
silica |
silica |
silica |
silica |
silica |
|
soda ash |
soda ash |
soda ash |
soda ash |
soda ash |
|
limestone |
limestone |
limestone |
limestone |
limestone |
|
dolomite |
dolomite, lead oxide |
dolomite |
dolomite, boric oxide |
dolomite, different chemicals to create different colors. ex. brown glass has iron sulphide |
|
glass bottles and jars |
glass bottles and jars |
insulation products |
light bulbs, sealed-beam headlights, bakeware, and labware. |
brown beer bottles, green bottles, wine bottles, etc. |
**Glass can be recycled an unlimited amount of times to make new glass products. Please recycle! Don’t have curbside recycling? Use this awesome tool to find out where.
If you’d like more information on our residential glass products please contact us today!
