In a world where nothing stays the same for long it’s good to know that some things can be relied on to be as consistent as they have always been. Glass baby feeding bottles are a great example of this. While other trends come and go, glass gets on with being quietly brilliant at letting your baby enjoy their milk safely.

Feeding your baby with a glass bottle means you just don’t need to worry. Glass is wonderfully simple: easy to clean, sterilise and re-use. It doesn’t need any extra chemical layers added during manufacture, plus it doesn’t absorb foreign substances, so stays pure and uncontaminated. And, because it doesn’t react with anything else, it’s safe to use over and over again. Plus, of course, glass performs really well in a microwave, without suffering any deterioration in quality or absorption, instead conducting heat efficiently. Glass doesn’t contain potentially harmful chemicals that can leach from more traditional feeding bottles over time, and if heated to a high temperature.

5 fab facts you should know about glass

• Glass is endlessly recyclable, taking just 30 days to journey from your recycling bin back to a new container on the store shelf

• Glass is good for you, it doesn’t need any added chemicals to protect food and drink

• Glass does not taint the original taste or quality of food or drink and preserves its contents for longer

• Recycling a single glass baby bottle or feeding jar could power a computer for 20-25 minutes

• 62% of adults prefer to drink liquid from a glass*. The Friends of Glass think if babies could talk, they would agree!

Win tickets to The Baby Show

Friends of Glass have five pairs of tickets to this May’s Baby Show to give away to lucky babyexpert.com readers. Click here to enter.

The article originally appeared on Baby Expert’s website.

Welcome to our competition to celebrate Iconic Brands in Glass!

Glass is the only packaging material that people are inspired to save, re-use, collect and display. What’s not to like? Glass can take on a glorious range of shapes, colours and textures. It’s the only packaging material that doesn’t need any extra layers to protect its contents and it’s 100 per cent recyclable!

We would love to hear which of our famous brands you love the most and why? Email greta.jonyaite@friendsofglass.com an image of yourself and your favourite glass product telling us why it’s your favourite and you could win a full goody basket of various glass treats!

Terms and Conditions:

• Competition closes 27th April 2012
• Friends of Glass will announce the winning photo after the closing date of the competition
• The winner will be notified by email by 10am on the following day.
• Entrants must be over the age of 16 and live within the UK. The Winner will be selected at random
• Please allow up to 14 days after the closing date for delivery of your prizes.
• There is no cash alternative. Friends of Glass UK decision is final.

WWF’s Earth Hour is a simple idea that’s quickly turned into a global phenomenon. Millions of people will be turning off their lights on March 31 at 8.30pm for one hour, on the same night, all over the planet.

Whether you plan to play scrabble or have a dinner party with family, here’s how to make your own Friends of Glass tea light lantern, so you can have a truly glassy evening.

How to make your own Friends of Glass Jam Jar Lantern

Materials

• Jam jars – assorted sizes
• Thin wire for hanging and small wire cutters
• Tea lights

Getting rid of the labels

• Do them in batches.
• Rip off the paper.
• Use hot water and washing up liquid.
• Leave them to soak for a good amount of time.
• Use a knife to scrape off stubborn glue.

Turning them from jam jars into lanterns

• Use thin but sturdy wire that’s easy to bend.
• Work out the length of wire you need by roughly wrapping it around the rim of the jar and making a loop for a handle.
• Cut the wire to length.
• Make a small loop in one end of the wire.
• Wrap the wire around the rim of the jar and thread it through the loop.
• Pull tightly and securely.
• Make the handle loop.
• Thread the end of the wire under the wire around the rim of the jar.
• Twist to secure.

Earth Hour – What Else Can You Do?

Earth Hour is not just about saving an hour’s electricity. It’s something much bigger. It’s about people coming together to put focus on this brilliant world we all share. Not just for an hour a year, but every day.

So, what can you do?

• First, check out what events are taking place in the UK and see how you can get involved and support them.
• Switch off your lights for Earth Hour 2012, starting at 8:30 local time on Saturday night, 31^st March.
• Decide what else you will do, after Earth Hour 2012 for more sustainable life. It doesn’t have to be huge – every little helps! Did you know that the energy saved from recycling one glass bottle can run a 100-watt light bulb for four hours or a compact fluorescent bulb for 20 hours.

If you Tweet, tell the word what actions you will take towards a more sustainable future using the hashtag #EarthHour.

Feel part of something brilliant. Sign up here to say that you’ll join millions of people switching off for a brighter future …

Last week the article ‘Is it time to pass on glass when it comes to serving wine’ was published on the Independent. It really got us thinking – when did glass become less eco-friendly than plastic for some people?

In the article, the journalist talks about the popular Italian restaurant chain Jamie Oliver’s Restaurants and their choice to serve wine packaged in Tetra Pak to their consumers.

The Chain of restaurants may of course choose to provide their customers with wine in ‘snazzy’ cartons as a marketing point of difference, but to claim Tetra Pak to be a greener choice than 100% recyclable glass as the chain’s MD Simon Blagden does, is we believe, misleading.

Tetra Pak’s three material elements – paper, plastic and aluminium, cannot be ‘closed loop’ recycled in the same way like bottles and jars, which can become new bottles and jars again in less than 30 days. In most cases, Tetra Pak cartons must be exported for specialist recycling or incinerated.

The article goes on to make selective material comparisons drawing on just manufacturing or distribution elements. What about the energy consumed when extracting oil and mining for Bauxite aluminium? Or the incineration process at end of the product’s life? The article also misses the fact that the majority of wine bottles are now ‘lightweighted’, becoming up to 40% lighter in recent years.

People who choose glass bottles for wine aren’t being snobbish. Glass is an inert, taste-free, and endlessly recyclable compound that simply makes it the best – and most sustainable – material for the job!

Why? Because glass doesn’t leach, it doesn’t react chemically with its contents and it offers an excellent barrier to gases. Glass is the only packaging material that fully preserves the original taste of wine, and with glass, wine tastes like wine! What’s more, the superiority of glass is confirmed by several independent studies*.

Consumers also prefer glass.  82.7% of consumers want to drink their white wine which has been preserved in glass and 74.9% prefer to have red wine in glass. (British Glass Taste Campaign Research)

* See e.g. the study, which was carried out by the Institute of Vine and Wine Sciences (ISVV) in Bordeaux, which found that the flavour and chemical composition of white wine changed within six months of being packed in single‐ and multi‐layer PET bottles and bag‐in‐box.

Some people have walk-in wardrobes – Bay Van der Bunt, 63, has a walk-in drinks cupboard, filled with some 5,000 bottles of old spirits and liqueurs such as cognac, armagnac, port and chartreuse.

It has taken the Dutchman nearly 40 years to build up what is believed to be the largest private collection in the world, and now he is selling it lock, stock and dusty bottle for €6m (£5m).

Mr Van der Bunt can be confident his investment continues to retain its fantastic quality thanks to glass. You don’t have to be a connoisseur to know that glass is the only choice when it comes to preserving quality, purity, safety and taste. Sadly, only a very lucky few will find out just how perfectly. Kim Willsher, a journalist from The Observer newspaper, who interviewed Van der Bunt is one of those and tasted a 203 year old brandy says: “It tastes smooth and warm and hard not to swallow. But a bottle 50 years younger than this sold for €119,162 (£100,000) at auction last year, so it seems only right to savour every sip, especially if each one is worth around €260.”

It is probably the most valuable and fascinating drinks cabinet in the world, which includes some truly historic glass bottles:

1795 BRUGEROLLE

Said to be the last remaining hand-blown jeroboam (6 litre) bottle in the world and believed to have travelled with the army of Napoleon Bonaparte as it waged war against Austria and the British. The Dutch republic fell to French troops in the same year. Bought from a Chicago collector in 1990 for more than €24,000. Estimated value €138,000 (£114,500).

1938 REMY MARTIN LOUIS XIII

More than 1,200 brandies were blended to form this special-edition cognac presented during the royal banquet of Queen Elizabeth and King George VI, in 1938. Only 600 of them are believed to still exist. Bought for €900. Estimated value €53,000 (£44,000).

1805 AE DOR, SOLEIL D’AUSTERLITZ

An extremely rare bottle – only three were made. In 1980 the owner of AE Dor kept one for himself, and presented the other two to French president François Mitterrand. Bought in 1989 for €3,000. Estimated value €18,000 (£15,000).

This article originally appeared in The Guardian.

According to an article published on Edie.net last week, the recent Soft Drinks Industry Sustainability Strategy report from the British Soft Drinks Association (BSDA) shows that soft drink manufacturers are on track to reach zero waste to landfill by 2015, and that maintaining product quality remains their key challenge.

It’s great to see that the report highlights the initiatives that companies like Coca Cola, Britvic and Shloer have taken to lightweight their glass packaging.

Shloer, for example, moved to using 750ml containers in June 2008. At that point, its 1 litre glass bottles weighed 660g.The new bottle now weighs 430g. Previously, to package 1ml of Shloer in a 1 litre bottle required 0.66g of glass. Now, packaging 1ml of Shloer requires 0.57g of glass in 750ml bottles.

This is just one example of how glass can help the BSDA close in on their objectives. Glass is a pure,sustainable form of packaging that’s healthy for both consumers and the environment, which ultimately leads to landfills not being crammed with packaging waste and our food and drinks retaining their original freshness for longer.

When it comes to sustainable packaging, glass has great credentials. Glass uses some of the earth’s most abundant raw materials – sand, soda ash and limestone – which when combined make a natural composition that is both 100% and endlessly recyclable.

Even when recycled again and again, the quality, purity and clarity of glass does not deteriorate. A bottle can go from a glass bank, through the recycling stream, remade into a new bottle and back on a store shelf in as little as 30 days.