Evidence-bound company brief · as of September 18, 2026

O-I Glass NYSE: OI

Glass containers, cullet recovery and furnace technology

OI
Public materials brief.

For O-I, recycled glass is not a side program. Cullet is a furnace input. The commercial problem is supplying clean, color-sorted, furnace-ready cullet at the right place and time.

O-I's 2024 sustainability disclosure reports a 40% global average cullet rate in 2024, while its current sustainability page describes investment in cullet-processing plants, supplier collaboration and more than 124,000 tons of glass collected through 63 closed-loop programs. O-I also identifies GOAT furnace investments at Vayres, Gironcourt and Zipaquira. Public disclosures do not establish a local cullet purchase program, plant acceptance specification, price or committed tonnage.

10% culletAbout 5% lower melting emissions, company-cited

Up to 100%Virgin raw-material substitution potential

Vayres, FranceGOAT furnace started 2023

Gironcourt, FranceGOAT furnace announced for early 2025

Material inputs to resolve

Color-sorted post-consumer glass cullet
Silica sand, soda ash and limestone
Energy, oxygen and furnace process inputs

Outputs and residuals to resolve

Glass bottles and jars
Cullet returned to furnace feed
Fines, ceramics, metals and other contaminants removed upstream

First decision: Choose one collection geography and one furnace. Qualify color, particle size, contamination, moisture, delivery cadence and the furnace's cullet acceptance profile before assigning circular value.

Material system

O-I makes glass containers from virgin batch ingredients and recycled glass, or cullet.

Cullet mechanism

The company says cullet requires less energy to melt, and reports approximate emissions reductions as cullet share rises.

Furnace technology

O-I describes GOAT systems that combine gas-oxygen melting, waste-heat recovery and cullet preheating.

Evidence boundary

Public sources establish the process logic and named French installations. They do not disclose a proposed site's intake terms, glass-color mix, pricing or allocation.

Decision boundary

O-I's transition lane is physically simple and operationally demanding: a bottle only becomes a new bottle if the recovered glass reaches the furnace clean enough, sorted enough and reliably enough to run the melt.

Material flow map

Material or stream	Qualification gate	Process or destination	Evidence still needed
Post-consumer glass	Color, ceramics, metals, organics and particle size	Sorting and cullet processing	Facility acceptance spec and yield
Furnace-ready cullet	Moisture, chemistry and delivery cadence	Melt furnace with virgin batch	Plant mix, allocation and production plan
Waste heat	Temperature and integration design	Cullet preheating or recovery	Furnace-specific engineering and economics

This is a public screening map. It separates company-disclosed flows from open qualification work. It does not convert a destination into a buyer or an announced ambition into operating capacity.

Evidence register

2024 Sustainability ReportO-I Glasshttps://investors.o-i.com/financials/annual-reports/
SustainabilityO-I Glasshttps://www.o-i.com/sustainability/
Sustainable progress toward decarbonizationO-I Glasshttps://www.o-i.com/news/o-is-sustainable-progress-towards-decarbonization-in-glass-packaging/
O-I sustainability and recycling ecosystemsO-I Glasshttps://www.o-i.com/sustainability/sustainability-report/
O-I sustainable progress toward decarbonizationO-I Glasshttps://www.o-i.com/news/o-is-sustainable-progress-towards-decarbonization-in-glass-packaging/
2024 Sustainability ReportO-I Glasshttps://staging.o-i.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/2024-Sustainability-Report-English.pdf
Veauche furnace and local cullet caseO-I Glasshttps://www.o-i.com/news/o-i-glass-to-invest-65-million-in-electrification-and-decarbonization-in-veauche-france/

Source hierarchy: filings and company disclosures first. The brief states what those sources support and leaves the unresolved plant, grade, permit, buyer and mass-balance questions explicit.

Artifact metadata

Public briefArtifact ID: mt-oi-glass-20260917As of: 2026-09-18Public-facing metadata only

Machine-readable source manifest

{
  "artifact_id": "mt-oi-glass-20260917",
  "company": "O-I Glass",
  "as_of_date": "2026-09-18",
  "sources": [
    {
      "title": "2024 Sustainability Report",
      "publisher": "O-I Glass",
      "url": "https://investors.o-i.com/financials/annual-reports/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Sustainability",
      "publisher": "O-I Glass",
      "url": "https://www.o-i.com/sustainability/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Sustainable progress toward decarbonization",
      "publisher": "O-I Glass",
      "url": "https://www.o-i.com/news/o-is-sustainable-progress-towards-decarbonization-in-glass-packaging/"
    }
  ]
}