Around Glasriket there are piles of waste, landfills, with toxic glass from glass production.
It is about 100,000 cubic meters of glass and some of the glass leaks toxic heavy metals, including lead.
Lead is harmful to both humans and nature, and therefore attempts are being made at Glassfactory in Boda in Nybro municipality to separate lead from glass.
A first attempt that was completed now in early May shows that it is possible.
- It was above expectations.
Great that we could see that the lead had ended up at the bottom of the crucible, just as we expected.
This is in line with what we have seen at the lab scale level, says Lina Grund, glass researcher at RISE.
Important to remove heavy metals from nature
The benefit of extracting lead from the landfill is double.
On the one hand, you get rid of toxic glass in the landfills that can leak heavy metals into nature, and on the other hand, it is possible to use both lead and the molten glass as a new raw material.
There has been talk of extracting metals from scrapped glass for a long time, maybe ten years, but nothing has been done.
Until now.
- A lot has happened in ten years.
Now society is ready.
The world is ready to think more about circular economy, says Lina Grund.
Now the project continues and this summer another test smelter will be carried out, this time in Målerås.
The idea is to then be able to scale it up and find an industrial process.
- It is important to make it work on a large scale, very large scale.
If I think about when it can become a reality, then in maybe five years, says Lina Grund.