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Glass is far inferior to paper, plastic and Styrofoam in terms of insulation. Thermal conductivity in terms of BTU/(feet - hour - degrees F) is 1.82 for glass, 0.09 for paper, 0.06 for Styrofoam. The conductivity of plastics varies depending on the materials: for polypropylene and polycarbonate, the thermal conductivity values are 0.69 and 0.35, respectively.
The thermal conductivity of a material is a quantitative measure of how much heat will flow through a material per unit time for a given temperature gradient. In the simplest materials the mechanism of heat transfer may be described at the microscopic level as transfer of energy through collisions between atoms and molecules. In a higher temperature region region the atoms and molecules have more kinetic energy than in a low temperature region.