Glass Bottle Crushers: A Game-Changer for Bar and Hotel Waste
For bars, nightclubs, and hotels across the UK, glass is a significant waste product. Recycling it properly is an essential part of managing your waste responsibly, but empty bottles and broken drinking glasses can soon take up a lot of space in your bin area, becoming heavy to move, and putting your team at risk of cuts and injuries.
If you’re wondering how to manage bar glass waste efficiently and safely, our guide is here to help. Read on to find out how a glass crusher can be a waste management game-changer for bars, hotels, and event venues.
What are your responsibilities when it comes to glass recycling?
Buying in bulk can be more cost-effective for products that sell well, which means that hotels, bars, and restaurants can often benefit from stocking larger glass bottles. Glass is also a highly recyclable material, helping businesses stock up in an environmentally conscious way.
However, there are also rules and regulations around recycling glass. In March 2025, the Simpler Recycling regulations came into effect in England, requiring any businesses with more than 10 employees to separate their recyclables into different bins. In some cases, glass can be collected with your other dry recycling, but you may find that collection companies will need to pick up your glass waste separately.
Learn more about how glass is recycled.
How does a glass crusher for bars work?
Glass bottles make up a large proportion of recycling for hotels, pubs, and any venues with a bar. From wine, beer, and spirit bottles to glass jars and chipped tumblers, these businesses can generate a huge volume of glass waste. Trying to fit it all into a single bin (even a large commercial one) can be tricky, especially at peak times.
A glass crusher is a specialised piece of machinery that uses metal rotors to reduce bottles into small pieces, depositing them into a bin below.
Models like the BB06 Glass Crusher are designed to minimise noise and feature extractors to remove dust as the glass is crushed.
What are the top bottle crusher benefits?
No matter what area of hospitality you’re in, if you regularly generate a high volume of glass waste, a bottle crusher could be a worthwhile investment. Here’s why:
Volume reduction
Bottles and jars take up a lot of space in your recycling bins. Their irregular shapes and sizes mean that your bins can soon fill up, with lots of wasted room throughout. A bottle crusher turns large bottles into very small pieces, which can optimise the space in your bins.
Improved safety
Full bins can lead to glass items being haphazardly stacked around the recycling area, causing trip hazards. Any cracks or breaks as bottles are thrown into bins can also pose health and safety risks. Your team can easily suffer cuts and lacerations from the shards.
By grinding glass into small particles, a bottle crusher reduces the level of sharp edges. It also lets you fit more waste in the bins, so there is less overflow.
When your glass bins are constantly at capacity, you require more frequent collections, and the collection cost can soon add up. By reducing how often your bins need emptying, you can keep your expenses down.
Hospitality teams are often rushed off their feet. With glass crushers like ours crushing 680 bottles in 10 minutes, managing your glass recycling can be fast and efficient, freeing up time so your staff can focus on other areas of the business, such as looking after customers and closing down the bar in a streamlined manner.
When recycling is easier and more efficient, employees are more inclined to take part. Adding a glass crusher to your premises can encourage a more eco-friendly approach across the board.
Our experienced team has helped hospitality venues across the country improve their waste management systems.
Whether you’re looking to add a compact glass crusher to your premises or carry out a free waste saving audit to find room for improvement, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. We’ll be happy to help.