The main components of ordinary glass include silica dioxide, calcium silicate, and sodium silicate, which are very stable in chemical properties. Among them, silica dioxide is very difficult to decompose naturally. Compared with white pollution mainly caused by plastic waste, waste glass products are even more difficult to decompose in the natural environment. Even by methods such as incineration and burial, they cannot be decomposed or rotted. If a glass drift bottle is thrown into the sea, it will still be there after decades, hundreds of years, or even thousands of years. Think about it, if glass is just constantly produced and cannot be decomposed or transformed, wouldn't our planet be littered with shiny but never-disappearing glass waste hundreds or thousands of years from now?
On the other hand, refining glass and processing various glass products consume a lot of raw materials and energy. If glass products are not reused and just thrown away after use, that would be very unfriendly to the environment. Therefore, waste glass should be recycled through dedicated channels. Some can be directly reused, and others can be melted and refined into new glass products using special techniques. This not only greatly reduces the amount of glass waste, but also saves a lot of energy. Some calculations show that the energy saved by recycling one glass bottle is enough to keep a 50-watt laptop running for 8 hours continuously.