Difficulties With Recycling Glass

Glass can be hard for collectors and recyclers to handle. It is breakable -- which can potentially cause worker harm. It comes in different colours and generally needs to be sorted if it is going to recyclers. Different recyclers prefer different colours. Most bottle-to-bottle recyclers prefer clear glass because they can add colour to glass but can't easily remove it. Coloured glass recyclers generally make a product in which colour is less important, like fibreglass insulation.

Contamination is a crucial issue in glass recycling. Not only do different colours of glass contaminate the process, but different types of glass can be an issue. Window glass and ceramics have different melting points than glass and can cause serious damage to glass-making equipment, as well as creating imperfections in the final product.

Glass is heavy, so it is costly to get it to market, especially if markets are far away, as they are here.

It is also very hard on crushing equipment (SARCAN replaces their glass crushers every year). It, like sand, is an abrasive and wreaks havoc with blades and hammer mills.

(Source: WasteWatch, March 2003)

You break it, you buy it: SK glass recycling programs

Glass recycling, like other materials, has had its ups and downs in Saskatchewan. The specific properties of glass — it’s heavy, the pieces are sharp, it’s very hard on recycling equipment and it’s basically inert — all contribute to too few glass recycling programs in the province.

Most of the waste management regions do not collect glass for recycling, citing lack of markets and the cost of shipping as reasons for avoiding this material. They followed the advice of recycling gurus who keep saying “don’t collect anything you don’t have a market for” and haven’t included glass in their programs. Regions that do collect glass have stockpiled much of it and ended up landfilling it in the end because of the high cost of doing anything else.

As of October 20, 2008, the City of Saskatoon has introduced a glass recycling program, as part of their Waste and Recycling Plan. Saskatoon does have a business that accepts glass as part of its subscription curbside recycling service.

Regina made national headlines last year (2007) with the news that it had been landfilling the glass collected in its recycling bins for the past two years. In that case, the problem wasn’t lack of markets per se (they had been reclaiming a gravel pit), but rather contamination. People put lids, dirty jars (with stuff still in them) and non-glass items into the bins.

Contamination of recycling depot bins is an issue for all material types (see the February 2008 issue of WasteWatch for an article about contamination in paper bins). The reality is that someone has to sort contaminated bin materials in order to make them usable (or else they have to be landfilled anyway) and that sorting costs money. The price that recyclers get for glass doesn’t come close to offsetting the cost of cleaning up contaminated bins.

Where glass programs in Saskatchewan are concerned, the reality is we still have a way to go.

(Source: May 2008 WasteWatch; updated Dec. 2008)

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