Dear Recyclebank: Why is my hauler no longer recycling glass? Glass can be recycled endlessly by crushing, blending, and melting it together with sand and other starting materials. Your account has been created successfully, and a confirmation email is on the way. Residents of Mooresville and Statesville should no longer put glass in recycling. Glass Bottles and Jars are Non-toxic Products – Glass is made from sand, limestone and soda ash. Recycling is a for-profit industry that relies on the ability to sell reclaimed materials at a profit. Glass is infinitely recyclable without loss in quality. 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. “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 … He explains that melting cullet doesn’t release carbon dioxide or other gases that can form unwanted trapped bubbles in the glass. You now have two options for glass disposal: 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! We use the information you provide to make your reading experience better, and we will never sell your data to third party members. Password and Confirm password must match. Only about one-third gets recycled. No longer must we labor. There are two types of cullet: internal and external. 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. If the spreadsheet permits, I think a portable cullet maker could serve several rural counties, a worthwhile multi-community enterprise (and social experiment). 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. If you have an ACS member number, please enter it here so we can link this account to your membership. are cut for every 10% of glassmaking mix substituted with cullet. In these programs, consumers separate glass from other recyclables, depositing them in glass-only collection bins. Must recycled glass be sorted by color? For example, in the US, some materials recovery facilities do not recover any glass from their single streams because there are no nearby buyers to make it worthwhile, according to Rue. Find out why some haulers are no longer accepting glass and learn about some good alternatives for recycling yours. However, some recycling center may still accept it, so you can check with a recycling center near you. Distances in the US between a materials recovery facility and a cullet supplier, or a cullet supplier and a buyer tend to be greater. If your neighborhood is no longer recycling glass curbside, do not put it in your recycling bin anyway and hope for the best. Probably not quickly, experts say. The effort has driven locals to regularly fill the bins with clean, high-quality recyclable glass. Glass is ending up in the trash As of Jan. 1, many recycling companies no longer accept glass and certain plastics. The idea is consumers will be more likely to recycle the bottles to get back their deposits. 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. Finally, in Europe, “recycling is the cultural and social norm,” Nordmeyer says. One outfit even offers portable units on trailers. The long-lasting nature of glass also means that glass can be recycled forever. Or does it require labor intensive, manual sorting? Basically, for every 6 metric tons of cullet used in manufacturing, glassmakers can cut 1 metric ton of CO2 emissions. Doing so benefits manufacturers, the environment, and consumers. The materials were previously sent to Bulloch County, which is no longer accepting glass or plastic. One significant difference between the US and European nations is size. It provides many benefits to glass manufacturing. Chemistry matters. Contact your hauler and find out if there are any alternatives for glass recycling in your area. This means those glass tomato-sauce jars can turn out to be the perfect containers to store rice, flour, beans, and other foodstuffs. Crushed glass, or cullet, is used throughout glass manufacturing and is key to glass recycling. Mauro is a materials scientist and glass specialist who spent nearly 20 years at the glassmaker Corning. BREAKING: Everything we know about the COVID-19 coronavirus. After that, it will no longer accept glass either. This type of collection requires a high level of consumer education and is considerably more expensive than single-stream collection. “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. US glass-industry trade groups are working with manufacturers and government agencies to boost the numbers. Enjoy these benefits no matter which membership you pick. Credit: Peggy Fox. Please help us keep the Penn Waste team safe by doing the following: Broken glass such … Glass can be recycled endlessly by crushing, blending, and melting it together with sand and other starting materials. 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. Remember to rinse your glass before putting it in the recycle bin. This is compounded by the fact that there are very few glass recycling centers around the country. In Decatur, recycling is good for the environment, and for the wallet. I try to stop buying glass items if possible. Send me new rewards, ways to earn points, and info about my recycling as it happens. This article has been sent to the following recipient: Copyright © 2020 American Chemical Society. 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. In contrast, some European countries recycle more than 90% of their waste glass. Most glass is infinitely and completely recyclable. But glass from multistream collection is much cleaner than what comes out of the single-stream supply. 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. I’m thinking about buying a glass cruiser. There was hardly any recycling in the community because there was no local cullet processor. And most municipalities are reluctant to do so. 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