Last November, a report by the City of Charlottesville’s Committee on Environmental Sustainability turned some heads when it revealed that the glass collected locally for recycling ends up in a landfill. Fortunately, the situation has improved—and was never quite as bleak as the report made it seem.
 Where do all the glass bottles go? For the most part, into the landfill, though as road bedding rather than general trash. |
Jason Halbert, chair of the Materials Management Subcommittee, says that the report was actually written last summer, and the situation has since been steadily improving. The biggest problem is a dearth of markets for recycled glass, partially because of the difficulty in sorting, cleaning and refurbishing it. Glass must be strictly sorted according to color, and pyrex, window glass, paper and metal must be removed before returning it to the furnace, making it an expensive process.
“It’s not the city’s fault or Allied’s fault,” Halbert says, referring to the company that handles curbside recycling. “It’s that the markets for green glass are poor.”
| C-VILLE asks some local recyclers where they think the glass that they recycle ends up. |
If you’re thinking you should start tossing all those bottles in the garbage, it’s not that there aren’t uses for waste glass, however. Bruce Edwards, recycling director for the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority (RSWA), took umbrage at the notion that glass from the McIntire Recycling Center was simply being thrown away. Instead, he pointed out that glass was being used as road bedding within the Ivy landfill in place of gravel. RSWA Executive Director Tom Frederick added that 600 tons of glass replace gravel roads and help with ground water remediation, saving the authority around $10,000 each year. In addition, RSWA has been working closely with a geotechnical engineer to find new markets for the glass, including asphalt mixes (or “glasphalt”) and in concrete.
UVA’s record is a little more complex. Until late last year, glass from the University ended up in a Fluvanna landfill. Again, it was used as road bedding, but also as “alternative fill,” used to separate layers of trash. Now the glass is sent to a facility in Madison Heights, where it is ground up and given to concrete producers. Allied Waste Management sends its glass to Tidewater Fibers in Chester, Virginia, which is a reclamation facility. However, Tidewater did not return calls by press time regarding the ultimate fate of that glass.
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