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Better Sorting Technology Means Recycled Glass Can Now Go into Bottles, Rather than Asphalt

By Rain Noe - July 1, 2013

in Tech

The streets of New York don't glitter with gold, but they are pretty sparkly from all that recycled glass mixed in with the asphalt. Putting crushed-up glass into roadways was previously the go-to option for what to do with the stuff, since it was just about impossible to separate broken glass from the other stuff in the recycling bin in a cost-effective way.

Now, however, better sorting technologies mean recycling companies can isolate clear glass—that's the stuff you want, if you want to turn it back into bottles--through a hi-tech series of automated processes. Check it out:

I realize it would be impossible to collect old bottles, sanitize them and re-use them, as we once did with milk bottles, but I wonder what the energy costs of that would be, versus recycling.

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Daniel

11 years ago

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I work for Owens-Illinois, in Perrysburg, near Toledo, Ohio. The two smaller communities here (Perrysburg and Maumee) do not sort the recycling, so employees are provided with containers that they can bring home to put glass in, then bring back into work so the glass can be recycled back into containers. The sorting is not just by color either. Leaded glass, pyrex (or Kimware), lightbulb glass, and boro-silicate glass can not be used to make new containers, as these glasses have a different heating (and thus, cooling) profile than the container glass.
Also, the bottles are coated with a polymer solution that helps to keep them from hanging up on each other or the line, and will eventually wear off, so it's actually better if they get turned into Cullet rather than just rinsed and sanitized. 1450C is a much better sanitizer than any kind of chemical treatment.
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Paljoey

11 years ago

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I wonder if they recycle the metal that they receive with the bottles as well?
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