Glass from Unburnable Trash to Circulating Insulation Material Conversion of Waste Glass into Insulation Material (1990s, Asahi Fiber Glass)

Glass from Unburnable Trash to Circulating Insulation Material Conversion of Waste Glass into Insulation Material (1990s, Asahi Fiber Glass)
In Japan in the 1990s, households and the food service industry generated large quantities of glass bottles, placing a serious burden on municipal waste disposal. Since glass cannot be incinerated and is heavy, it had to be disposed of in landfills, and the tightness of final disposal sites had become a nationwide problem. The volume of used glass continued to increase due to the decrease in the number of returnable bottles and the increase in one-way bottles, leading to discussions on recycling-related laws in 1991 and the Containers and Packaging Recycling Law in 1997.
Under these circumstances, Asahi Fiber Glass established a technology to recycle waste glass into glass wool, a heat insulator for houses, by crushing, removing impurities, melting, and processing into fibers. The lightweight, easy-to-construct, and noncombustible material contributed to the improvement of the thermal insulation performance of houses, and attracted attention as an environmentally friendly and high-performance building material as demand for thermal insulation materials increased with the revision of energy conservation standards in 1992 and thereafter.
The use of waste glass also reduced the amount of silica sand, a natural resource, and contributed to the reduction of resource consumption and environmental impact. It also served as a model case for a recycling-oriented society by linking the recovery and manufacture of glass in the region, and became the foundation for later resource recycling policies. This technology is a symbolic example of the conversion of glass from landfill to a building material that improves the energy-saving performance of homes.