The view from over there: why thinking back from the future could help the glass industry meet the challenges of today

It’s impossible to accurately predict the future. Just ask political pollsters. As futile as it might be however, we still can’t help trying. Of course in business, forecasting what we want to happen is an effective way of directing our efforts towards a desired outcome. Successful organisations do it particularly well. The problem is that often the challenges and obstacles immediately ahead can mean we get stuck in the weeds of today and innovative thinking suffers.

There is a way to use thoughts about the future to help unlock today’s thorny problems though. At British Glass, when we wanted to share our vision of how we see the future of glass packaging, we created a  video that skipped forward to 2050 and looked at the view from there. Imagining what might be possible can feel quite different when unshackled from immediate issues.

This isn’t to say that existing barriers are not difficult or even sometimes seemingly insurmountable. However, allowing bigger ideas to emerge and exciting possibilities to take form from a desired future, and then brainstorming ‘how we got here’, means new pathways might be found from this different, new perspective.

Using back-casting isn’t new, but it feels particularly helpful as we seek to tackle so many systemic, societal and natural world challenges at once. Solve one issue only to find it’s inextricably linked to another, giving rise to new problems elsewhere and so on. The result is that it can all feel insurmountable.

However, as Malini Bose of KPMG found when working to develop a future climate-focused transport strategy for a client, visioning and back-casting provides a refreshing approach:

“Instead of forecasting what the future would look like based on current trends and forecasts, we developed a perfect end vision of a net zero state in 2050 and worked backwards from there to articulate what needs to happen (within the system and our client’s organisation) in 2040, 2030, and 2025. This helped unshackle our thinking from current challenges and uncertainties.”

So what does the future for UK glass manufacturing look like if we apply this principle of visioning and back-casting?  

Decarbonised glass manufacturing in the UK – the view from 2050

There is cheap, reliable, low carbon energy that is sited and delivered in geographically appropriate sites close to glass furnaces. That energy is made from a mixture of solutions, the majority of which is electricity but also includes bio-methane, and hydrogen. Carbon Capture, Utilisation and Storage (CCUS) is used as standard by the glass raw materials supply chain, directly addressing Scope 3 emissions. Transport-wise, the government policy to ban the sale of new diesel  haulage vehicles by 2040 has effectively meant that weight-based transport emissions connected to glass is no longer an issue.

A crucial area for glass is always to get as much cullet back into the furnaces as possible, reducing emissions and the need for new raw materials. This means creating a highly efficient recycling system, where post-consumer glass never ends up in landfill but is part of a continuous circular loop. Therefore by 2050, our vision is that recycling has become the norm for everyone. In 2050 it’s no longer socially acceptable to put anything in the bin unless it is non-recyclable. Like smoking in enclosed public places or drink driving, which at one time were accepted behaviours, throwing precious materials away in 2050 is no longer okay. Local authorities are empowered through policy to provide collections for all recyclable materials.

By 2050, microplastics are finally on the way out. In 2024, just 9% of all the plastic ever produced had been recycled and 12% had been incinerated. The problems caused by the presence of microplastics in the environment and in human bodies has prompted many innovations for new sustainable packaging materials and promoted the widespread use of safe, inert, glass.

If this is the future we imagine, and taking the principle of back-casting, what might be the key milestones that were achieved on the way for glass?

The view from 2025

By the end of 2025, the new test hybrid / electric glass furnaces were proved as a concept; a new industrial strategy for mapping the energy infrastructure  in the UK is underway, giving glass manufacturers the confidence to build more new generation furnaces and every local authority is collecting glass separately at the kerbside, driving up the quantity of cullet back into the system.

…and by 2030

By 2030 the glass industry has reached its 90% collection for recycling target and all local authorities are specifying that glass must go to remelt in the UK, boosting available cullet. Some glass furnaces are now fully, or mostly, electric and natural gas starts to be substituted for hydrogen where available. Haulage is well on the way to switching over to electric vehicles.

…and by 2040

By 2040 many glass manufacturing operations and the transport supply chain are now nearly 100% decarbonised.  New hybrid/electric furnaces continue to come onstream, as more old tech furnaces reach end of life. This progress is supported by a consistent and effective industrial strategy and policies from Government. The transport industry has also taken a leap forward and electric lorries are now the most common sight on the road. Nationalised railways mean more freight is carried by rail, and all production of new combustion engines has ceased.

There are sophisticated sorting machines as standard across the recycling industry, allowing for very high levels of cullet collected for the glass furnaces. The hospitality industry has switched back to reuse as standard, enabling more glass to be diverted from landfill than ever before.

The future begins here

To some this picture of the future for glass may seem too idealistic. But it’s worth pausing our present-day scepticism a while longer. If we look back 25 years to the late 1990s, there are many innovations we take for granted today that would have seemed hard to imagine, such as the incredible everyday possibilities offered by AI, the highly sophisticated tech that we know as smartphones and cars that we no longer fill up but plug in.

So this 2050 vision for glass is not only possible, it’s also one that can be inspirational if we allow ourselves to keep our eyes on the horizon, although it certainly won’t be easy. As Malini Bose says, “trying to effect systemic change of this scale and complexity can often feel slow, political and emotionally taxing…it may be the most challenging work that we will ever engage with during our careers.”

It also presents us with a once in a generation opportunity to think big and let our imaginations take the wheel, directing us into a future that will make a positive difference to us, our communities and the planet.

Jenni Richards, Principal Policy Advisor, British Glass