We use the information you provide to make your reading experience better, and we will never sell your data to third party members. If your neighborhood is still accepting glass, consider yourself lucky. Basically, for every 6 metric tons of cullet used in manufacturing, glassmakers can cut 1 metric ton of CO2 emissions. Credit: Peggy Fox. Discount will be applied automatically at checkout. Glass recycling is the processing of waste glass into usable products. The effort has driven locals to regularly fill the bins with clean, high-quality recyclable glass. This means those glass tomato-sauce jars can turn out to be the perfect containers to store rice, flour, beans, and other foodstuffs. Fairfax County residents can no longer recycle glass curbside. So some recycling sorting facilities are no longer accepting glass. Most recycling processing facilities are sending the broken mixed glass to a landfill because there is no manufacturer that needs or wants this glass. The Borough of Chambersburg contracts with Waste Management for recycling. Glass bottles and jars make attractive vessels for fresh flowers and don’t distract the eye. Charlotte company no longer recycling plastic due to global crisis. Brightly Colored Paper. Markets for recycled glass are narrow and often only the highest quality glass can be sold for a profit. “You have to sort through all the trash to get to the material that manufacturers want and are willing to pay for.”. Looking for suggestions. If the spreadsheet permits, I think a portable cullet maker could serve several rural counties, a worthwhile multi-community enterprise (and social experiment). One significant difference between the US and European nations is size. –Helen J. Dear Helen: Some haulers aren’t accepting glass any longer because it has become less cost-effective to recycle it. It's a shame if any glass container uses up landfill space because glass lasts forever. (optional). Mixing glass hues diminishes the quality of the recycled product and, consequently, the ability to sell recycled glass in the future. of glass is disposed of every year in the US. Recycling in the U.S. is broken. Unfortunately, the cities and counties affected have no choice in the matter, because there are no longer any local … “Recycled glass is nearly always part of the recipe for making new glass,” says Joseph J. Cattaneo, executive director of the Glass Packaging Institute (GPI), a trade association representing the North American glass-container industry. Glass is ending up in the trash As of Jan. 1, many recycling companies no longer accept glass and certain plastics. When studying glass recycling, the first thing that becomes clear is that cullet is extremely useful. If your neighborhood is no longer recycling glass curbside, do not put it in your recycling bin anyway and hope for the best. Picking up the pieces of US glass recycling. They are available here in North America and the technology produces amazing results. Waste Management will no longer accept glass in your curbside recycle cart It’s now official, and effective immediately: Waste Management will no longer accept glass in your curbside recycle cart. Related: What’s fiberglass, and how does the delicate material reinforce thousands of products? Should I Cushion the Glass in My Recycling Bin? How to Recycle Glass. These efforts begin with a top-to-bottom analysis of glass recycling to identify areas for improvement. In contrast, some European countries recycle more than 90% of their waste glass. By understanding these hurdles to glass recycling, GMIC, GPI, and other industry groups hope to boost the rate in the US. Because of the difference in the quality of glass from the two streams, just 40% of glass from single-stream collection ends up being recycled into new products, compared with about 90% of glass from multistream systems. Send me new rewards, ways to earn points, and info about my recycling as it happens. Enter it here to complete your registration. One outfit even offers portable units on trailers. In 1960, Americans generated 2.68 pounds of garbage per day; by 2017, it had grown to an average of 4.51 pounds. Title: Why glass recycling in the US is broken. Glass is infinitely recyclable without loss in quality. Manufacturers agree that using cullet benefits glassmakers, the environment, and consumers. ACS values your privacy. “It was a classic chicken-and-egg problem,” says Michelle Goth. You now have two options for glass disposal: It’s unlikely in the foreseeable future that the economics of recycling in communities throughout the US will change to favor multistream recycling collection, as is commonly practiced in Europe, Lipetz says. Sign up for C&EN's must-read weekly newsletter. Eventually, they did put up glass recycling centers around the county. Another factor helping Europe maintain high recycling rates is high landfill costs, which make trashing glass in those countries more expensive than recycling. Most of the efforts to boost glass-recycling rates in the US have been state and local affairs. If recycling glass becomes impossible for you, consider switching your purchase practices. This means that food-grade glass can be recycled … Sign in with a different account. And, he says, the recycling rate discrepancies between the US and other countries result mainly from differences in government policy and consumer education and habits. gets recycled in several European nations, on average. When it comes to glass recycling, there’s container glass … and everything else. Believe it or not, bright paper can stop a whole batch of paper from being … In addition to public works centers, many grocery stores still have recycling machines in their vestibules. Recycling companies are claiming contamination is a major contributor. Donate usable luggage, or try to find a luggage-drive run by local travel agencies. Please help us keep the Penn Waste team safe by doing the following: Broken glass such … “Large quantities of high-quality cullet are essential to further increase the recycled content in our products,” says Frank O’Brien-Bernini, vice president and chief sustainability officer for Owens Corning, a major fiberglass manufacturer. Next, automated separators called star screens, together with powerful air jets, remove cardboard and paper, while magnets pull out iron-containing materials. I don't know prices yet, but I think these machines are pricey. Ensuring that your recyclable glass products are unbroken and free of contaminants should be your priority. That sorting happens via a combined manual-plus-automated multistep process at a materials recovery facility. Enjoy these benefits no matter which membership you pick. RTS Recyclebank partners with cities and brands to reward residents for helping to make their communities cleaner, greener places. Well-meaning people think since those components can be recycled, they’re justified in tossing the whole thing—dirty filter, wet coffee grounds, and all—into a recycling bin. US glass-industry trade groups are working with manufacturers and government agencies to boost the numbers. Yet each year only one-third of the roughly 10 million metric tons of glass that Americans throw away is recycled. This gives glass the best chance to be sorted effectively and thus recycled into quality products that can be recycled again, retaining the value of the glass material, rather than being down-cycled into products that most likely won’t be recycled again. Dear Helen: Some haulers aren’t accepting glass any longer because it has become less cost-effective to recycle it. Is the color of the glass important? Glass Bottles and Jars are Non-toxic Products – Glass is made from sand, limestone and soda ash. Yet each year only one-third of the roughly 10 million metric tons of glass that Americans throw away is recycled. Glass that is crushed and ready to be remelted is called cullet. Multistream recycling, which is a far less common approach in the US, is simpler on the processing end. thrown into single-stream recycling collections actually gets recycled. Glass Containers No Longer Accepted in Curbside Recycling Program To improve the quality of single-stream recycling, we will no longer accept glass bottles and jars in curbside recycling bins effective Oct. 1. Remember to rinse your glass before putting it in the recycle bin. To switch to multistream systems, these municipalities would need to introduce taxes or fees to meet the higher collection and handling costs. Technology has come a long way. A recycled glass bottle is no less durable than one made of raw materials. The ideal is to purchase what you can of your food in bulk, with as little disposable packaging as possible, which (bonus!) It's kind of a pain, but I make the extra effort at least. If a supplier needs to process multiple types of cullet to meet various manufacturers’ needs, their production costs increase. Other items that will no longer be recyclable include gabled cartons — the triangular-roof shaped cartons often used for milk and juice — and large plastic items like lawn furniture and buckets, pots and pans, and shredded paper. US municipalities manage residential recycling primarily via single-stream curbside collection. When it doesn’t pay to recycle a given material, Material Recovery Facilities (MRFs) will often stop accepting it. “We were disturbed to hear about the decision by this recycling center to no longer accept glass," Crane said. The materials were previously sent to Bulloch County, which is no longer accepting glass or plastic. “We are a ready and willing customer for increased output from consumer recycling,” O’Brien-Bernini says, but the economics of producing cullet aren’t always favorable for would-be suppliers. Metal containers and recyclable plastics come second and third, respectively. Has your community stopped collecting glass? The U.S. recycling industry is overwhelmed — it can't keep up with the plastic being churned out. This is compounded by the fact that there are very few glass recycling centers around the country. This change applies to county collection customers and private haulers. The rest ends up in landfills. The glass industry regularly mixes cullet—a granular material made by crushing bottles and jars usually collected from recycling programs—with sand, limestone, and other raw materials to produce the molten glass needed to manufacture new bottles and jars. In Decatur, recycling is good for the environment, and for the wallet. So one key factor that stands in the way of the US glass industry’s ability to boost recycling numbers is the limited availability of satisfactory cullet produced via single-stream processing. I try to stop buying glass items if possible. All Rights Reserved. Recycling is a for-profit industry that relies on the ability to sell reclaimed materials at a profit. Mirror glass is also comprised of additives that make it hard to recycle. “It has an unlimited life and can be melted and recycled endlessly to make new glass products with no loss in quality,” he adds. The long-lasting nature of glass also means that glass can be recycled forever. Probably not quickly, experts say. In Georgia, Candler Recycling Center reports that glass and plastic recycling is “suspended” until the county can find a place to take these materials. It’s time to get serious about recycling lithium-ion batteries, Alternative materials could shrink concrete’s giant carbon footprint, Porphyrin wheel sets record as largest aromatic ring. After several more separation steps, a device known as a glass-breaking screen removes most of the glass from the single-stream load so it can be sent to cullet suppliers, who clean it and make it furnace ready for glass manufacturers. But most municipalities in the US stick with single stream because the collection costs are lower than those with multistream systems. This article has been sent to the following recipient: Copyright © 2020 American Chemical Society. Following a European model, Ripple placed 60 large glass-only collection bins across Kansas City and nearby locations and has been successful in spreading the word about the benefits of recycling. Related: Stiff-yet-supple plastic can be reshaped and recycled. Good to know about this. Americans dispose of some 10 million metric tons of glass annually. However, some recycling center may still accept it, so you can check with a recycling center near you. are cut for every 10% of glassmaking mix substituted with cullet. 7 Projects For Kids To Upcycle Jars And Bottles, Free Child Admission with Purchase of Adult Admission, Proper Green: Popular Resolutions for Health, Home, and Environment. Trained operators manually remove scrap metal, textiles, hoses, and other materials that never belonged in the recycling bin and can damage sorting equipment. And, unlike in the US, recycling is legislated in many European countries nationally, not locally. Contact your hauler and find out if there are any alternatives for glass recycling in your area. Multistream glass typically bypasses materials recovery facilities and goes directly to cullet processors. And North Carolina enacted an on-premise recycling bill that requires alcoholic-beverage-permit holders to recycle bottles and cans. Citizens in many communities in the Upstate are dismayed by recent announcements that they will no longer be able to recycle their household glass. Glass is easy to recycle, but not in a single bin with paper and plastic. That’s not because of some intrinsic materials or chemical property that makes glass difficult to recycle. By continuing to use this site you are agreeing to our COOKIE POLICY. Distances in the US between a materials recovery facility and a cullet supplier, or a cullet supplier and a buyer tend to be greater. People also tend to throw in a lot of things that shouldn’t go in the bin, such as plastic bags, batteries, light bulbs, soiled food containers, used napkins, and what Nordmeyer and others call “wish-cycling” materials. Discount will be applied automatically at checkout. Not you? The key ingredients used in glassmaking are sand (mainly silica, SiO2), sodium carbonate (also known as soda ash, Na2CO3), and limestone (CaCO3). Despite cullet’s long list of benefits, glassmakers are limited by what recycled material is available to them at a manageable cost. We need your zip code to see if you're eligible to get rewarded for recycling at home. For example, 10 states have passed so-called bottle bills that require consumers to pay deposits on beverage bottles. California passed legislation requiring that insulation glass used in the state contain 30% cullet and that container glass be made with at least 35% cullet. Transporting glass waste and cullet is costly because of their weight, and those costs can be a deal breaker for some glassmakers and can prevent would-be cullet suppliers from opening processing facilities. Compared with multistream recycling, “single stream is an inherently inefficient and expensive recycling method,” Lipetz says. Modern glass crushing/cullet making machines clean, crush, and optically sort the recycled glass; left-over fines are used for other purposes, e.g. Password and Confirm password must match. That’s because non-containers are treated with chemicals to make them more durable, but this reduces the recycling market for things like windows, mirrors, light bulbs and glassware. A few communities have set up bottle-redemption centers and instituted separate curbside glass collection. Barbara Gear, general manager at Olive Street Processing, said the company stopped recycling glass in January partly because glass is in a “negative market” — meaning that it can cost … This site uses cookies to enhance your user experience. Most glass is infinitely and completely recyclable. Recycled mixed broken glass can find applications in some industries, such as insulation and water filtration, but because all the different types of glass are blended together, the quality is low and can’t be used for more in-demand applications such as beverage bottle production. He explains that melting cullet doesn’t release carbon dioxide or other gases that can form unwanted trapped bubbles in the glass. After that, it will no longer accept glass either. So Boulevard helped launch Ripple Glass, a cullet supplier for which Goth serves as general manager. Europeans have been recycling for many years, and children there are educated about it at school and at home starting at a young age. In these programs, consumers separate glass from other recyclables, depositing them in glass-only collection bins. The rest ends up in landfills. My local municipality stopped taking glass in their recycling program, due to cost. About 400 such facilities operate in the US, according to Rue. To start the sorting process, front-end loaders dump huge piles of single-stream recyclables onto conveyor belts. “There are many reasons why more glass isn’t recycled in the US,” says David Rue, an engineer at the Gas Technology Institute near Chicago who recently completed a yearlong study of US glass recycling as a consultant for GMIC. In addition, common soda-lime cullet made from bottles and jars isn’t compatible with window glass and the type of fiberglass used in reinforced composites, further limiting recycling opportunities. SOURCES: Glass Packaging Institute, Waste 360. The glass recycling problem: Why is glass no longer being accepted for recycling in many markets? Finally, cullet has a significant environmental benefit. Yet as the percentage of glass recycled in Spain and the UK, for example, has doubled and tripled in the past 25 years, respectively, the numbers in the US have barely budged. This type of collection requires a high level of consumer education and is considerably more expensive than single-stream collection. So you have to drive to one, and sort the glass yourself by color. Credit: Owens-Illinois But don't worry if you're not; you can still earn rewards online. Residents of Mooresville and Statesville should no longer put glass in recycling. Related: What’s glass, and how are modern-day researchers enhancing its properties? For those of us who spent most of our lives painstakingly separating plastic, glass, paper and metal, single-stream recycling is easy to love. Will efforts like these local and state ones bump up recycling rates across the US? To send an e-mail to multiple recipients, separate e-mail addresses with a comma, semicolon, or both. Most of it ends up in the trash. What fabrics make the most effective homemade masks? Related: Chemistry may have solutions to our plastic trash problem. Using 10% cullet in the manufacturing feed lowers emissions of CO2 by roughly 5%. Crushed glass littered loads of recyclables as drivers dropped off their hauls. The laws are having the intended effect. I’m thinking about buying a glass cruiser. Find out why some haulers are no longer accepting glass and learn about some good alternatives for recycling yours. Chemical & Engineering News will not share your email address with any other person or company. By submitting your information, you are gaining access to C&EN and subscribing to our weekly newsletter. Recycling is a for-profit industry that relies on the ability to sell reclaimed materials at a profit. One kilogram of cullet replaces 1.2 kg of raw materials, according to James V. Nordmeyer, vice president of global sustainability at Owens-Illinois, a major manufacturer of glass bottles and containers. … Single-stream means residents use their recycling bins to comingle glass with aluminum and steel cans, various types of plastic, newsprint, junk mail, cardboard, and other paper products. Learn why glass is no longer accepted in the curbside recycling program. When glass goes into a landfill, it is not harming the environment or atmosphere. The problem’s not that glass isn’t recyclable. I go to MO or OK several times a year and have been known to take my glass with me and my friends recycle it for me. Adding the material to the mix reduces greenhouse gas emissions during manufacturing, Nordmeyer points out. Can this be done with automated equipment? When it doesn’t pay to recycle a given material, Material Recovery Facilities (MRFs) will often stop accepting it. Doing so benefits manufacturers, the environment, and consumers. Today, recycling managers are facing new pressure as commodity prices have dropped. It provides many benefits to glass manufacturing. And the US’s roughly 33% glass-recycling rate, which pales compared with the 90% recycling rate in Switzerland, Germany, and other European countries, is not the result of a lack of technical know-how. BREAKING: Everything we know about the COVID-19 coronavirus. Cullet also helps manufacturers save on energy costs. The US glass-recycling shortfall comes down to the interplay between the quality and availability of cullet and the economics of making glass, he explains. Items such as light bulbs, candle holders, glassware, mirrors, windows, and other non-recyclable glass products can be a serious safety hazard to our Penn Waste team if not disposed of properly! And most municipalities are reluctant to do so. For every 10% of cullet included in the glassmaking feed mixture, the energy needed to keep the furnace at temperatures high enough to generate molten glass falls by nearly 3%, Rue says. There is debate about how safe or unsafe it is to reuse plastic due to the leaching of chemicals, but glass can be reused endlessly until you are ready to recycle it. “Glass is 100% recyclable,” says Robert Weisenburger Lipetz, executive director of the Glass Manufacturing Industry Council (GMIC), a nonprofit trade association. In addition to the material characteristics that are working against glass being recycled, single-stream recycling is also making glass more expensive to recycle. If you see this comment, i'd like more info on who you are looking at using this way to recycle. But glass from multistream collection is much cleaner than what comes out of the single-stream supply. Mauro is a materials scientist and glass specialist who spent nearly 20 years at the glassmaker Corning. What Should I Do with My Chipped Dishes and Bowls? Garbage, like those products, contaminates all the recyclables in the bin, Nordmeyer says. According to Glass Recycling Institute, curbside-recycling programs can generate high participation and gather large quantities of glass, but drop-off and commercial recycling programs yield higher-quality materials. And there was no processor because locals didn’t recycle much. Join us to get the news you need. Optical sorting machines have been around for a few years now. Only about one-third gets recycled. China is no longer taking the world's waste. The Kansas City, Missouri–based beer maker bemoaned the absence of an active local recycling program, which meant that millions of its empty beer bottles were ending up in landfills. “At that time, Waste Connections representatives cited several reasons for the change, including that glass was causing damage to equipment and no longer had a market as a recyclable … I try to make a trip over there once a month or so. No longer must we labor. Your account has been created successfully, and a confirmation email is on the way. I live in Phoenix too. Another factor affecting the costs of recovering cullet from glass waste is that cullet specifications vary from one manufacturer to another depending on the intended application.