The True Cost of Single-Use Glass
And why bars are paying the price — financially and environmentally.
The journey of a typical single-use glass spirit bottle is far longer — and more expensive — than it first appears.
Most bottles are manufactured in China, where large-scale production offers low per-unit costs but comes with high environmental impact due to the energy-intensive process and reliance on coal-fired furnaces. Once made, bottles are shipped thousands of miles to warehouses in Europe, where they sit in storage awaiting use.
From there, they’re transported to UK bottling facilities, where they are rinsed, filled, labelled, capped, and packed. These bottles are then moved to a national distribution centre, then a regional depot, and finally sent to the bar or pub where they will be used — once.
Total journey: 6,000+ miles, countless handling stages, and substantial emissions — all for a bottle that will be thrown away after a single use.
Once empty, these bottles are typically placed into commercial recycling bins. In the on-trade sector, bottles are often considered mixed-colour or contaminated cullet, making them unsuitable for high-quality bottle-to-bottle recycling in the UK. Instead, they’re crushed, packed, and exported again — often to Portugal, Spain, or Germany — for energy-intensive remelting and reprocessing.
And the cost?
- High emissions from global shipping and road transport
- Energy-intensive production and remelting
- Packaging and recycling fees
- Labour and storage at multiple points in the supply chain
- Under the UK’s Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) rules, bars and producers must now track and pay for the packaging they place on the market
All of these costs — environmental, logistical, and regulatory — are passed down and built into the price of the spirit. The bottle you throw away might be invisible to your customers, but it’s costing your business more than you think.
Speed Rail Spirits offers a smarter alternative.
Our system replaces single-use bottles with custom-branded, reusable glass bottles that stay on the bar and get refilled again and again. Spirits are delivered in 5-litre bag-in-box refills, which are easier to store, cheaper to ship, and significantly better for the environment.
- No glass to recycle
- No miles of international transport
- No unnecessary packaging waste
- Lower emissions, lower costs, and stronger brand visibility at the bar
It’s a better way to serve house spirits — designed for modern bars that care about profit, sustainability, and standing out.