This document discusses some of the challenges with recycling glass. It notes that glass often breaks during collection and sorting, lowering its quality. Approximately 40% of collected glass is "downcycled" into products like fiberglass instead of new containers. Manufacturers also have preferences for certain glass colors, requiring sorting. Contamination from other materials can render recycled glass unusable. While recycling glass is preferable to sending it to waste-to-energy plants, the recycling process faces difficulties in maintaining the quality of glass to be re-used for new containers.

1. Glass bottles: we chuck it in the
blue bin without a second’s thought.
Should we consider a moment of
hesitation?
There’s a side of glass recy-
cling that we don’t see. It’s mostly
“out of sight, out of mind” once we
toss the glass bottle or jar into the
blue bin. However, glass doesn’t stay
intact en route to the recycling facil-
ity and therein lies the problem, just
one of the several challenges specific
to the material.
Here in Syracuse, we have sin-
gle-stream recycling: all recyclables
are collected into one bin and picked
up, alongside trash, from the curb-
side by OCRRA (Onondaga Coun-
ty Resource Recovery Agency). It is
then sorted at the recycling facility,
with glass likely separated based on
its weight. In addition to the glass
that arrives broken at the facility,
the separating machines increase
the chances that the glass will be in-
advertently crushed. This lowers its
quality for being reprocessed into
new containers. It means this glass
will likely be downcycled, i.e., recy-
cled into a product of lesser-quality,
such as fiberglass. In fact, approxi-
mately 40% of glass collected annu-
ally is downcycled.
Large pieces of glass are pre-
ferred when it comes to reprocess-
ing glass into new containers.
Picky manufacturers present
another challenge to glass recycling.
Glass is produced in many colors for
different products. Some companies
have a preference for specific colors,
like brown or green. As such, glass
may need to be sorted by color be-
fore it is crushed down for the recy-
cling process. Otherwise, the color
is the color of the original product
and could be contaminated. While
we don’t have to worry about sort-
ing colors because we have single
stream recycling, it’s not obvious
what happens at the recycling facili-
ty. I wonder if there’s manual sorting
and sifting or a high-tech solution to
distinguish and separate the bottle
colors.
When the glass is crushed
and ground up for recycling, the
resulting product is called cullet.
Aside from contaminations of color,
the batch of cullet could also be con-
taminated by chemicals added to
the original glass product for prop-
erties, such as, affecting its strength
and opacity. Additionally, physical
contaminants, such as bits of metal,
sand, or plastic in the glass product
can render the cullet useless.
On the other hand, if glass
ends up in the trash, it is destined for
Onondaga County’s waste-to-en-
ergy plant. It is incinerated, along
with the trash, and converted to en-
ergy that could power at least 25,000
homes. However, that’s wasted glass,
which could be recycled and used
to produce an all-glass contain-
er instead of using about 95% raw
materials. In general, recycled glass
can go back into producing another
glass container and is ready for pur-
chase at the store in a matter of less
than a month.
I once suggested reusing
glass bottles to a former roommate.
She gave me an odd sort of look
and then told me she wouldn’t be-
cause she didn’t want to deal with
broken glass. I countered by asking
her whether she would reuse plastic.
Her answer was yes, but she general-
ly would prefer not to reuse. I imag-
ined many others would have a sim-
ilar preference for reusing plastic
over glass. Would they be the same
people forgetting to recycle, choos-
ing to trash glass because of conve-
nience?
I did an informal survey
among friends and students living
in Syracuse to find out how people
felt about recycling glass. Did they
know anything about the difficulties
behind the scenes?
“Recycling glass is much
easier than recycling plastics,” said
Noah Pasqua-Godkin, an ESF grad-
uate student. “With plastics, I have
to figure out if it can even be recy-
cled because of the various recycling
numbers and container types. I also
need to remember to uncap them.”
“Glass is glass. It all goes to
the [blue] bin,” said Pasqua-Godkin.
He says this but I’m sure he knows
OCRRA advises residents to throw
away fiberglass, vehicular glass, and
broken glass in the trash.
“I usually try to avoid the
whole situation, in general, by us-
ing my reusable bottle. I don’t want
to be wasteful, but sometimes you
gotta use the plastic or glass. The
worst part is when there aren’t any
recycling bins around then you have
people throwing them away since
they’re too lazy to find them.”
Beverly Agtuca, an ESF se-
nior, tells me she encourages all sorts
of recycling. “I recycle glass when-
Local
Pain In the (Gl)ass
Problems with recycling glass
Jennifer Louie, 2015
2 | The Knothole | Student Life & The Environment