THIS is one business in Hampshire that will be delighted to see your Christmas leftovers - and the more the better.
Glass recycler Recresco is expecting a record festive season by way of tonnage as more green-minded people than ever choose to dispose of their empties in bottle banks.
Ten staff will be working flat-out throughout this month and January as lorry deliveries from across the south arrive hour by hour at Recresco's hi-tech plant at Southampton docks.
The purpose-built centre uses computer technology along with crushing and grading machinery to sort out different colours of glass at up to 30 tonnes an hour and with 99 per cent purity.
It even sorts out mixed colours, contrary to what national media reports may have indicated in the past.
Processed, the glass is crushed in readiness to be loaded on to ships bound for Span ish and UK glass manufacturers .
The material is then reprocessed back into wine bottles, where they end up back on the shelves of Britain's supermarkets.
Family-owned Recresco, which is the Latin name for ‘to use again', even has an environmentally friendly way of disposing contaminated glass - by turning it into a rough sand aggregate used for road building.
The amount of glass handled at the plant each year has trebled in the past three years to 90,000 tonnes.
Recresco boss Tim Gent said: "This is our busiest time as the nation celebrates the long festive break, and we hope everyone in Hampshire remembers to recycle their glass bottles.
"We are on course for a record handling year, which is good for us and for the environment, and we'd be delighted to drink to that!"
The Recresco plant at Herbert Walker Avenue, near the King Geroge V Graving Dock, was opened three and a half years ago.
It deals with bottles brought in by local authorities from across Hampshire, including Southampton and Portsmouth, as well as parts of Dorset, Devon, Surrey and some London boroughs.
ENDS
Written by Ron Wain of Deep South Media
Ron has more than 15 years' experience as a senior newsman at three daily regional newspapers, including the last nine as business editor and deputy news editor of the Southern Daily Echo in Southampton, Hampshire.