The other day I got a call from one of my in-laws asking about recycling. She lives in Georgia, and wanted to know why she couldn’t recycle her glass. And to that, since I don’t run her town’s recycling program, I don’t know exactly, but I could guess some of the reasons that places don’t accept glass (it’s heavy to move, it’s dangerous for curbside bins when it breaks, and there can be too many contaminants, especially curbside).
When someone from a different county asks me a recycling question, I always preface “Well, what we do HERE is...
” and then just give as much background knowledge as I have about the material, and the general processes it takes to get it from the consumer to back into the production stream as recycled content. Only 81% of Americans have access to glass recycling, so either she’s in the 19% that doesn’t have access, or that the municipality doesn’t want the hassle with the hauling. However, it made me think that I hope all of you know that we do take food grade glass here in Gaston County (not window glass, no decorative lighting or vases, candle jars or ceramics etc.
) and I’m here to share the story with you, of where it goes after you place in the collection bin. Let’s start with glass is great to recycle. It’s a very circular material.
You buy a glass bottle or jar of something delicious, contents are consumed, drop it in the recycle center, it is hauled to a recycler, and they sell it to another company that uses it t.