Quality Control
Needed for Successful Recycling in Montana!
Good evening Montana! Matt Elsaesser here with
Recycle Montana. Next Tuesday, April 22nd, is Earth Day! Earth Day
is a great time to discuss day-to-day opportunities to reduce our impact on the
planet and build community. The three Rs of reduce, reuse and recycle are
always a great way to start the discussion. Reducing our waste by bringing our
own mug to the coffee shop or donating our used household items to a local
thrift store is pretty strait forward.
Recycling is a bit more complicated. Recycling
creates a valuable resource from what would we would otherwise waste. Quality
control is essential and partnerships are needed to get recyclables from the
recycling bin to a new product in the market or to find a permanent end use in
construction or infrastructure. We can all do our part by knowing and following
the guidelines of the recycling programs we utilize. The better informed we all
are when we recycle, the more effective existing and future programs can be at
collecting recyclables and finding the most valuable use for the recycled resource
we create.
Glass
recycling provides a great example of the importance of quality control.
Community glass recycling programs are designed for container glass. Container
glass includes bottles and jars one would find at a grocery store—such as a
bottle of wine or glass jar of salsa. The many other types of glass, ranging
from wine glasses, plates and coffee mugs to light bulbs, home windows, and
windshields have different composition than container glass consisting of jars
and bottles. These other types of glass, generally durable goods designed for
long-term use may have specialized recycling program at their point of sale.
Many successful Montana recycling enterprises start
with well-sorted container glass. In Livingston, pulverized glass—glass
processed up to a quarter inch with no sharp edges--and sand is used in public
work projects, landscaping, and pipe bedding. Pulverized glass from rural
communities was used in road base in Interstate 15 near Boulder. Glass in
Helena is recycled into cement at a nearby plant in Montana City. Glass
collected by a retailer in Bozeman is collected and crushed into large boxes by
a local recycling company. The glass is shipped by truck to Salt Lake City for manufacturing
a variety of products including insulation. Montana glass ships by rail to Golden
Colorado to become new bottles.
Glass contains embodied energy and a variety of
resources. Silica or sand is the major ingredient, but sodium carbonate or soda
ash, lime, and other additives can make up more than a quarter of glass containers. Such materials are mined and shipped
great distances today. Glass
container recycling provides a valuable base material to be used with less
energy in future manufacturing, as an aggregate in local construction and
public works projects, and--of course--in new bottles. Reusing bottles, as done by a local
brewery in Missoula maximizes these benefits!
Keeping non-container glass, other recyclables and
trash outside of glass collection bins is essential for successful glass
recycling. Small safety rings and labels are usual okay, but metal lids should
be recycled with like metals and corks should be removed. The glass should be
clean and stored without lids from the start. Cleaner, properly sorted material
yields a higher quality product that can be recycled into a greater variety of
commodities to be used again. While the specific guidelines vary, this is true
with all recycling.
Recyclers compact and bale the most common
recyclables-such as cans, cardboard, and plastic for shipping. Glass can only
be crushed, requiring handling more similar to construction aggregate. Whether
separating recyclables at a local drop-off site or using a single stream
recycling bins where compactable recycles are mixed to be separated later,
glass requires different handling and equipment. The glass cannot be separated
by downstream processing as well as the compactable recyclables and is--at
best--more expensive and difficult to sort.
Fortunately,
glass has other local uses as well. Community partnerships can and are making these options work.
Recent revelations of the loads of glass being contaminated in Missoula provide
an opportunity for all of us to learn how important it is that we follow
program directions and encourage our friends and neighbors to do the same. For
glass and all recycling, the better job we do, the more valuable the recyclable
resource we create together has a community becomes.
A 2004 study by the Montana Department of
Environmental Quality found that recycling provided nearly ninety million
dollars in revenue and sustained over 300 full-time jobs in Montana. Montana
Recycled or diverted three-hundred and fifty thousand tons or twenty-two
percent of the 1.6 million tons of the municipal waste generated in 2012,
showing a decrease in land-filling and an increase in recycling from 2011. In
2003, the number was only fifteen percent. There is much more to be done with
recycling in our homes, businesses and communities. Together, we can continue
to further reduce waste and put more resources to good use in Montana. I’m Matt
Elsaesser with Recycle Montana. Learn more about recycling online at RecycleMontana.org Have a great evening and keep recycling Montana!
