Bengal Glass for 'People, Planet, Profit'

Bottles on the conveyor belt ready to be inspected at the factory of Bengal Glass, which produces those from recycled glass. Photo: Courtesy

The Daily Star speaks to the winner of the HSBC-The Daily Star Climate Awards 2011, Bengal Glass Works Ltd, about its “People, Planet, Profit” model.
“Recycling your waste and being energy efficient can provide real cost-savings,” says Amyn Saleh, director of Bengal Glass Works Ltd. “Sadly, it is a concept which many businesses in this country do not fully appreciate yet.”
Established in 1967, Bengal Glass is the country's only fully-automatic glass plant producing amber glass bottles for pharmaceutical products and glass lamp shells.
Saleh and his colleagues at Bengal Glass have adopted a number of “green” measures to secure the future of the firm, and in the process have reduced carbon emission and decreased the consumption of scarce natural resources.
“Green business has a triple bottom impact -- economic, environmental and social. Through recycling and adopting energy efficient measures, we have managed to reduce energy consumption, decrease landfill wastes and provide employment to those who collect recyclable materials,” explains Saleh. “We also call this the 'People, Planet, Profit model'.”
Ordinarily, the process of creating glass requires phenomenal energy consumption resulting in greenhouse gas emissions. However, Bengal Glass replaces virgin raw materials with broken glass or “cullet”, collected from municipal waste channels to reproduce glass. Since cullet melts at a lower temperature, it requires considerably less energy, says Saleh. In addition, one tonne of cullet reduces carbon dioxide emissions by 314 kg.
The recycling process also ensures that glass does not add to the municipal landfills of the country.
Bengal Glass saves energy in other ways too. Modern furnaces designed with regenerators utilise waste heat contained in the bricks to reduce the energy requirement, resulting in energy savings of nearly 35 percent. Meanwhile, the firm has invested in insulating the furnace walls to retain the heat within the furnace, reducing another 2.5 percent of energy consumption.
“Bengal Glass is always looking for options to recycle,” says Saleh. “For instance, used water is cooled down and recycled for cooling of equipment operating at high temperatures, waste lubricating oil is reused for lowering glass melting temperatures and cartons for packing are designed so that customers can reuse them.”
He also says glass bottles are a safer and more environment-friendly than its alternative -- bottles made from polyethylene terephthalate (PET).
Unlike glass, PET can and often do interact chemically with the medicine, especially at very high or very low temperatures, thus altering the chemical structure of the medicine, he says. “This can have particularly dangerous repercussions for patients on life-saving drugs.”
Saleh says the main component in polycarbonate plastic, called Bisphenol A, can cause neural and behavioural effects in foetuses, infants and children, resulting in early puberty, altered prostrate and urinary developments in infant males and a variety of cancers.
Apart from health hazards, plastic also poses a great threat to the environment. Unlike glass, which can be and is recycled endlessly in Bangladesh, only a small percentage of plastic is recycled back into new bottles, he adds.
PET is non-biodegradable, taking as much as 1,000 years to erode, he says.
Saleh highlights the fact that competition from plastic bottle manufacturers is threatening the survival of the glass industry. “People need to understand that plastic causes irreparable damage to their health and the environment.”
Bengal Glass continues its research and invests in newer technologies that are more energy efficient.
Saleh says, “We have benefited and will continue to benefit from an operational standpoint, but at the same time, strengthen its environmental responsibility by reducing its carbon footprint as well as save vital resources."