IYOG was launched in the Palace of Nations, Geneva, in February this year. It was led by Alicia Durán, a physicist and research professor at the Institute of Ceramics and Glass, Madrid, and John Parker, emeritus professor of glass science and engineering at Sheffield University. The country sponsoring the UN resolution was Spain, with China as co-sponsor: these days, Durán says, the Chinese ‘have 55% of all the float glass furnaces on the planet’ and are leaders in optical fibre, as well as in glass display screens. For her, glass ‘the material of the future’, which will be needed ‘to build a sustainable planet’ – soda lime glass, for example, widely used in bottles and other packaging, can be recycled without wastage or loss of quality and, as such, can have a vital place in the ‘circular economy’.
Unsurprisingly, given these origins, the emphasis in the IYOG’s opening ceremony was primarily on glass as an industry, from its origins 3,500 years ago up to the 21st century. Parker stresses the versatility of glass, from use in mirrors and perfume bottles to medicine phials and satellites. On paper, at least, the organisers have created a genuinely international movement, endorsed by over 2,100 institutions from 90 countries.