Letter of the Day | Revive glass bottle manufacturing

THE EDITOR, Madam:

After reading the article ‘Glass half-empty ’ in Tuesday’s Gleaner, I must ask the question: Isn’t it time for someone to look at the revival of the glass bottle manufacturing industry?

After all, there is now relatively cheap liquefied natural gas (LNG) as a heat source to melt the silica from St Elizabeth, together with the other components. There are now more efficient, new bottle making machinery nowadays as well.

So what’s stopping us?

We used to have a glass industry. Remember the glass factory at Three Miles at the bottom of Hagley Park Road in St Andrew?

I don’t know if the deposits are large enough, and the quality suitable for glassmaking, but the mining and geology section of government most certainly know from information in their files.

A lot of our industries need glass containers. Can we afford to choke our productive industries through the worldwide shortage of glass containers when we can produce them ourselves and separate ourselves from the fluctuations in the world market?

Something to think about. As well as us citizens not chucking out the empties to end up in our garbage dumps, but instead recycle them.

HOWARD CHIN

Member of Jamaica Institution of Engineers