Metal and glass industry marks: a reminder is not a recycling rate

Visual referenceSource-linked artwork

Marks and reference graphics are shown for identification, academic research and commentary. The image does not grant permission to apply a scheme mark to packaging; consult the issuing body's current eligibility and artwork rules. Licensed marks are not reconstructed as production files.

A third family of chasing arrows

Beside the ownerless Mobius loop and the access-tested national schemes sits a third family on metal and glass: industry reminder marks. They look like recycling symbols because they often use a container outline and a loop. They are not the national schemes, and they are not resin-identification codes.

That is why this article exists separately from the chasing-arrows article, the Mobius loop and the national-scheme comparison. A steel soup tin in the United Kingdom may carry a Recycle Now-style material reminder, an OPRL “Recycle” instruction, a resin-code-like material abbreviation, and a Tidyman. Only one of those is the access-tested sorting label.

The Glass Hallmark

FEVE, the European Container Glass Federation, licenses the Glass Hallmark. “The use of the hallmark is entirely free! All you need to do is sign a licence agreement with FEVE, because it is a registered trademark.” The organisation describes it as “a communication tool designed by the industry to promote the “recyclability” and “inertness” qualities of glass as materials”. It “represents the ability of the container glass on which the mark is put to be recycled and to optimally preserve the content as a result of its inert nature.” Then the negative: “The Glass Hallmark does not express or claim any other product-related characteristic. It is not an official certification stamp. More specifically, the Glass Hallmark does not constitute any other environmental claim implying in any way e.g., that the glass container concerned contains a minimum percentage of recycled glass or it is effectively recycled at the end of its life” (Glass Hallmark / FEVE, n.d.).

The Hallmark is therefore a licensed material-promotion mark. It is closer in legal character to the Green Dot (a trademarked communication, licensed, not a fate certificate) than to a Type I ecolabel or to OPRL. Free of charge is not free of conditions: the signed licence is the control. No millimetre table is published on the “use the hallmark” page retrieved for this article, and none is stated here. The mark is not reconstructed as a production file.

Aluminium and steel

Recycle Now’s aluminium gloss is an identity statement: the item is made from recyclable aluminium. It is not How2Recycle’s “Widely Recycled”, it is not a UK recycling-rate figure, and it is not Alupro’s industry statistics about national aluminium-packaging recycling performance. Those statistics describe a stream, not a SKU. Printing an aluminium loop on a tray that a given collection system does not accept is the same over-claim the Mobius loop has always been capable of, with a material name attached. Steel has the same structure: a reminder that the material is a recyclable metal, not a proof that the local authority collects that format.

PPWR’s forthcoming harmonised composition label, and the national sorting labels already in force in France, Spain and Italy, will sit on the same packs. An industry reminder that survives next to a statutory instruction is decoration unless the two agree. Where they disagree — a Hallmark on a container whose national label says the item is residual — the statutory instruction is the one the obligated party is bound by.

Traps

Do not read a material loop as an access-tested recyclability claim. Do not read the Glass Hallmark as recycled content or as a recycling-rate. Do not treat Recycle Now’s consumer page as a licence to reprint WRAP artwork; Recycle Now explains symbols, it does not, on that page, grant a packaging trademark. Do not confuse these marks with Tidyman (anti-litter) or the Green Dot (EPR financing). No millimetre figures are stated in the FEVE or Recycle Now pages cited, and none are invented.

References

Recycle Now / WRAP (n.d.) Recycling symbols: what do they mean?. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 22 August 2026).

Glass Hallmark / FEVE (n.d.) Use the Hallmark.. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 22 August 2026).

Note on sources and verification

Aluminium, glass, Mobius, Green Dot and Tidyman glosses are quoted from Recycle Now’s symbols page. The Glass Hallmark’s free-licence terms, the recyclability/inertness proposition and the express negatives (not a certification stamp; no minimum recycled-glass claim; no “effectively recycled” claim) are quoted from FEVE’s “Use the Hallmark” page. Industry recycling-rate statistics are deliberately not attached to SKU-level marks. Millimetre specifications were not located on the cited pages. Licensed artwork is not reconstructed.

Last verified: 22 August 2026.