3/22/19

Glass remains a municipal waste stream challenge

One material in the waste stream remains a challenge: glass. It takes enormous amounts of energy to melt and millions of yards of earth to disturb every year to mine the silica used in its manufacture.

Japan recycles nearly 100% of her glass but the US has thousands of mountains of glass cullet from the municipal waste stream waiting to be repurposed.
The Santa Fe Solid Waste Management Agency Joint Powers Board is considering a contract amendment that could cost in excess of $200,000 a year for an Española trucking company to haul most of the glass collected here to the Momentum Recycling plant in Broomfield, Colo., between Denver and Boulder. The Momentum company, however, is less strict in accepting glass, accepting loads that have up to 25 percent nonglass material, such as plastic and paper that make it into the glass deposit bins. [Santa Fe New Mexican]
According to NPR reports and other sources the Earth isn't producing sand fast enough to keep up with the humans. We sell millions of tons of salvage material to India and Asia to be recycled while tearing up our own ground mining for virgin minerals while steel and plastics, that could be petroleum, are buried in landfills.

If hydraulic fracturing has to occur why not divert and mine waste glass from landfills for frac sand instead of ripping up the Earth for new sources of quartz?


at

1 comment:

  1. larry kurtzJanuary 19, 2020 at 11:02 AM

    "...company is taking plastics such as shopping bags, food containers and peanut butter jars. The material is then manufactured into synthetic lumber, wharf timbers, guardrail posts and agricultural posts." Majority of plastic recyclables in Halifax being turned into synthetic lumber

    ReplyDelete

Republican is simply another word for Earth hater but comments intended to troll the author or other readers will not be published so use a handle or even your real name and don’t be an asshole.