The life cycle of a Swiss glass bottle

We have chosen “Elmer citro glass bottles”, because we wanted to take a thing, which we use everyday. Honestly, we both don’t drink citro everyday, but I am sure that there are people who drink Elmer citro or Elmer mineral everyday. We wanted a product, which is produced in Switzerland.

The bottle

A glass botte is produced out of sand, chalk and soda. Both sand and chalk are extracted (gewonnen) in Switzerland. Soda comes from Egypt. The Elmer citro bottle is produced by the company Vetropack, which is located in Geneva. Mostly the bottles are produced out of recycled bottles from all over Switzerland.

The drink

The mineral water comes from the spring right behind the factory. If it rains, a part of the water percolates (versickern) in the underground. It goes through different rock formations. The water gets filtered and cleaned. The whole journey through the stones takes 8 years. From there it goes straight to the factory of Elmer citro and with the addition of flavours the drink is created.

The Recycling process

If you buy a Elmer citro glass bottle, you can give it back to the company. They clean it and then fill it again. But not everybody knows that and just throw it in a glass gathering place (Glassammelstelle). We had the chance to interview Mr. Keller who has a glass gathering place in Hinwil called Keller Recycling AG. Every week they load 7 tons on the train to Morsch which is near the lake of Geneva. There it gets sorted by colour and then it gets melted. Out of the liquid mass new bottles, are formed.

elmer bottle recycling graphics
Source: Glass recycling

The making of

It was the first time we both made a stop-motion-video. We found that it was a great experience, because we learned a lot about the life cycle of a Elmer citro glass bottle. In the beginning we informed ourselves about different types of programms to make a stop-motion-video. We found a suitable app, which was very easy to handle. For the video we took some pictures of different situations. The only difficulty we had was to set the sound on the video, because we just had one shot to do it.

Our text was reviewed by our English teacher Sonia Hemmerle.

The writing part of our Project is based on interviews with Mr. Keller from Keller Recycling AG and Mr. Andres from Elmer citro AG.

Kristina Wälti and Natalie Farner

☷ See the project teams here »
☵ Some words about the contributions »

8 thoughts on “The life cycle of a Swiss glass bottle

  1. Hey Kristina and Natalie!
    Thank you for this intresting contribution!

    First Impression:
    Your heading Picture is very nice. The Video helps to understand the whole lifesycle of an elmer citro bottle. Well done! 🙂

    Content
    Your contribution is written very clearly so that everyone can understand what you are writing about. I learn some new things about the LifeCycle of a glass bottle. Thank you for that!

  2. Dear Elmer Citro-Team
    We really like your contribution. For example we didn\’t knew that a common drink has such a complex life cycle. We especially like your video. It\’s a brilliant way to sum up an object.
    Cheers,
    Kim & Cécile

  3. Dear Natalie and Kristina
    Thank you for your interesting contribution! I was able to learn some new information and know better about the life cycle of a Swiss glass bottle. For example, I have learned how the ingredients of Elmer Citro come from and where the bottles are produced. The homemade video of you is very successful. I have nothing to criticize with you.

    Love Isabella (cardboard packaging team)

  4. Dear Elmer Citro Team,

    Thanks for this great post, which is very informative and instructive. Especially impressive I find your self made stop-motion movie it is really succeeded.

    Greetings, Michael (Airplane-Team)

  5. Dear Elmer Citro Team

    Your stop-motion movie is really good and we think you invested much time for your project. The idea with the truck and the world map is very good because now you can imagine how long the trip of the Soda, the sand and the chalk took place. Question: Did you visit the factory in Elm?

    Greetings Gillian and Mara (Cheese-Team)

  6. Hi Team W2W43

    Mrs Teacher showed us your stop-motion video, seems like that was hard work.
    It came out pretty great!

    We also didn\’t know that it is possible to return the bottles to the company, very interesting!

    Greetings, Ben & Dave

  7. Hello together

    First Impression:
    First, I have to say that the first that I had a good first Impression when I saw your head Picture and I remarqued your own-made Video, which I didn\’t expect. The text is splitted with meaningful under-titles.

    Content:

    I especially like that you wrote about the ways of the most important ingredients of a glass bottle and where they come from.
    The video itself is fine, but I would it place at the end of the text, because when you first watch the following text is less interesting for you.

  8. Dear Elmer-Citro team,

    You have done a really great explanation about the life cycle of a glass bottle. I really loved your video, which supports to understand the whole process.

    Do you know what the costs are to get the recycled glass back to Vetropack?

    Best regards,

    Dany

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