Murcia's 'Miniglús'

THE NON-profit glass recycling organisation Ecovidrio has revealed that, on average, Murcia region residents deposited 58 bottles in the green collection containers – called Miniglús – during 2020.

This translates to almost 17 kilogrammes per inhabitant, or a regional total of 25,607 tonnes.

To further understand the importance of using Miniglús, recycling this amount of glass prevented the release of 16,506 tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere, which is equivalent to taking 7,732 cars off the road for one year.

For residents to have achieved this, it meant that more than 240,000 bottles were deposited every hour, an averhostelry age of more than 160 a minute.

Residents and visitors to the Murcia region have a total of 7,784 green containers available to them for the purpose of recycling.

Ecovidrio said that the figures revealed that, during lockdown, residents ‘used more glass containers in their homes and visited the green containers with more frequency’, meaning that recycling became a ‘habit’ as a result of the pandemic.

The organisation noted that in ‘absolute terms’ 2020 saw an overall reduction in the amount of glass put into the green containers – in Murcia region there was a 3% reduction, compared to 6% nationally. Despite the reduction it has to be noted that the sector is responsible for more than 50% of all glass usage, so with bars and restaurants closed for a large part of last year, the recycling figures in general and in particular Murcia, are encouraging.

Ecovidrio noted that in the Murcia region alone it has almost 60 weekly glass collection routes.