NPR’s Planet Money looks at how used bottles are recycled and turned into new bottles in “Secrets From The Recycling Plant,” and also explains the process with some fascinating animated GIFs in this companion article.
Today, recycling plants use optical sorting machines. These machines take pictures of all the glass, and then use air jets to blow the clear glass onto a different conveyor belt.
A glass-blowing machine blows the gobs of molten glass into red-hot bottles.
video and GIFs via Planet Money
