More and more glass container manufacturers choose to recycle their products. The goal is to achieve a 50% recycling target by 2013. Why recycle glass? Arizona Glass professionals know the answer. Energy efficiency is the main argument in favor of glass recycling. Statistically, recycling only one glass bottle saves the amount of energy needed to light a 100-watt light bulb for four hours and power a TV set for 20 minutes. Home Glass Repair Chandler claims that using 50% recycled glass in glass package manufacturing will save energy to power 22,000 homes and reduce 181,000 tons of waste from landfills. Every ton of recycled glass saves one ton of natural resources. For every 10% cullet in glass manufacturing, energy costs decrease by 2-3%.

The benefits of recycling glass are obvious. Nowadays, there are 50 glass manufacturing facilities operating in 22 states. Almost eighty glass recycling facilities are currently run in 31 states. Arizona Glass professionals know what it takes to run a facility as large and sophisticated as a glass recycling plant. Such plants can process an average of 20 tons of sorted glass every hour. Yet, the process of glass recycling is not without difficulties. The most important is the process of sorting the glass container mix. Porcelain, ceramics, dishware, and Pyrex are the most serious glass recycling contaminants. According to Home Glass Repair Phoenix, only 40% of glass from single-stream collection ends up in the recycling plant, whereas another 40% of glass is thrown to landfills. Thus, the current process of recycling is not perfect. However, Arizona Glass believes that recycling is the future of the glass manufacturing industry. What we need is simply to invest additional resources and knowledge to improve the quality of recycling strategies. Recycling will make glass manufacturers more environmentally friendly.

Today we begin a series of discussions concerning various types of architectural glass. Nowadays, dozens of companies all over the world manufacture architectural glass. Arizona Glass professionals believe that talking of architectural glass is extremely relevant and important, since more consumers seek sophisticated solutions to their construction needs. Architectural glass is used as a building material. In most cases, architectural glass is transparent and embedded into the building envelope; it is also used as an internal architectural feature. Crown glass is one of the most popular types of architectural glass.

Crown glass is claimed to be one of the earliest types of window glass. In the first years of industrial glass manufacturing, workers would blow a huge hollow globe, which was then transferred to a pontil and flattened, to become a flat disk. Home Glass Repair Chandler tells that, to flatten the glass globe, centrifugal forces were used. The flat disk that resulted was approximately 6 feet in diameter. Workers then cut the disk, to make up pieces of the size required.

The structure of glass in the crown glass disk was uneven. The thinnest glass was at the edge of the disk, and the thickest glass was at its center. According to Home Glass Repair Chandler, crown glass was used to decorate windows. Workers cut small pieces from the edge of the disk, mounted them into a lead lattice work, and fit them into the window. The so-called bullseye made of the pieces of glass from the thickest center of the glass disk were used to create and decorate less expensive windows. Arizona Glass professionals cannot conceal their awe, as they study the history and process of glass manufacturing. However, the popularity of crown glass gradually decreased until, at the beginning of the 19th century, it was completely replaced by other glass types. Today, crown glass exemplifies an important element of glass history.

The glass industry is the industry with the highest wage growth potential? No way! Unbelievable, but true! Arizona Glass asserts that the U.S. glass industry exemplifies the most attractive and rapidly growing sector of the nation?s economy. Take a look at the figures: to begin with, glass manufacturing has been with the humanity since the 7th millennium B.C. As of today, the glass industry earns approximately $28 billion per year in revenues and has almost 150,000 workers. The industry grows 2.5-3% on average. In the meantime, workers in the glass industry earn more than their colleagues in other industries, and wage growth prospects in glass manufacturing are greater than in other industries. The fact is that the American economy is slowly recovering from the last financial crisis. Construction firms are facing greater consumer demand, and glaziers must follow the same trends. Like the construction industry, glass manufacturers will hardly return to pre-recession wage levels, but employees in the glass industry have better opportunities to earn well.

How much do workers in the glass industry earn? Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics provides a good answer to this question. In 2008, median hourly wages of U.S. glaziers were $17.11; today, glaziers? wages have fallen to $16.00. The highest wages achieve an unbelievable $22.66, whereas the lowest earn as much as $10.50. Glaziers? wages vary, depending on the sector of employment: those in the foundation and exterior contracting earn more than those working for building materials supply dealers. Apparently, the greater safety risks the higher glaziers? wages become. Arizona Glass professionals also know that union employees usually earn more than their nonunion colleagues. We also know that the glass industry will be growing fast. Our employees are our greatest asset, and we are prepared for the challenges awaiting us in the future. We also hope that changes in the American economy will support us in our way to business and professional excellence.

Arizona Glass professionals continue a series of discussions about various types of architectural glass. Today, we are talking about so-called cylinder blown sheet glass. It is hand-blown glass used to decorate windows. Home Glass Repair Phoenix says that cylinder blown sheet glass undergoes manufacturing procedures similar to broad sheet glass, but these procedures result in bigger cylinders. Generally, cylinder blown sheet glass is produced by swinging the cylinder in a trench and letting it cool down. Once cool, glass is cut into pieces. Then these pieces are reheated and flattened. As a result, cylinder blown sheet glass is produced, in the form of large panes, possessing exceptional surface quality.

The manufacturing process of cylinder blown sheet glass presupposes blowing glass into a cylindrical mould. The ends of the cylinder are cut. Home Glass Repair Chandler also knows that the resulting cylinder is sent into an oven, where it unrolls and turns into a flat piece. The method was extremely popular at the beginning of the 20th century, and some manufacturers used cylinder blown sheet glass to produce stained glass. Yet, most stained glass experiments failed. Their results created serious misconceptions in the glass manufacturing field. At that time, many glass professionals believed that glass was a thick high-viscosity fluid, which did not solidify even in room temperatures.

You can often see in movies how 19th century?s workers created glass products. Gone are the times when cylinder blown sheet glass was the most popular type of glass to decorate windows. However, Arizona Glass professionals believe that past manufacturing experiences can teach perfect business lessons. Eventually, without cylinder blown glass experiences, contemporary glass manufacturing would have been impossible. It is useful to look back into the history and learn the lessons of the past.

Safety is crucial to the success of glass manufacturing. We at Arizona Glass repair know how much it takes to ensure safety and security of all industrial procedures. We know how much professional glaziers invest in devising safety strategies and systems. It is no wonder that the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission seeks to implement a series of new safety standards for glaziers. In the middle of 2010, the CPSC proposed imposing new standards of product safety on glass manufacturers; the new standards would include five essential elements ? product specification and production testing, certification testing, recordkeeping, and a remedial action plan. All these elements would operate as part of the single mandatory testing programs, which all glass manufacturers and glaziers would have to implement. Arizona Glass professionals are aware of the changes, which the proposed standards would cause in the glass manufacturing field. Professional glaziers will need to initiate changes to most, if not all, testing procedures, no matter what type of glass products they offer.

Just recently, the Commission announced that the decision to enforce the new standards was postponed. Most probably, the Commission wants to ensure that the new standards are manageable and feasible. In the meantime, glaziers must prepare themselves for regulatory and operational changes. New standards will go into effect and affect only safety glazing materials, which are being installed in hazardous locations. The latter have always been within the jurisdiction of the CPSC. What seems reasonable is that the Commission gives glaziers more time to familiarize themselves with the meaning and implications of the new standards. We hope that the new standards will foster the creation of high quality, safe glass products. We also hope that the new standards will not become another bureaucratic impediment to the development of the American glass market.