Glass Breaks New Ground in Secondary Markets

You wouldn’t have to search too deeply to find the data to support your observations and conclusions. The recycling rate for glass containers reached 38% in 1996, according to the Glass Packaging Institute (GPI), Washington, D.C., which represents the glass container industry in North America. This rate represents a 16% increase since the industry began measuring in 1988.

“The recycled glass market is strong,” says Lewis D. Andrews, Jr., GPI president. “Our members are committed to buy and use cullet.”

GPI statistics for 1996 suggest a strong market for recycled glass. Consider the following:

*More than 2.5 million tons of cullet (processed recovered glass) were used.

*There were more than 500,000 tons of glass refillable containers in use.

*Nearly 650,000 tons of recovered glass was used in non-container applications such as glassphalt, road filler and fiberglass.

STABLE AND STEADY

With numbers like those above, it’s tempting to believe that the glass recycling industry is enjoying boom times. Such is not the case, however. Rather, glass recycling is going through a “stable and steady” phase. While these might be positive words when describing the family breadwinner, they point to a lack of growth when describing a commodity market.

Although the glass container recycling rate for 1997 is not yet available, Andrews notes it will be close to the 1996 figure.

“I don’t think a whole lot changed in the past year,” says Douglas Gibboney, area director for GPI in Carlisle, Pa.

This is echoed by Bob Kirby, project engineer for the CWC, Seattle. The CWC is a private, non-profit organization that offers advice and consultation on recycling market development.

“The value of recycled glass is very stable,” says Kirby. “This is a negative.” What then is the problem?

The problem may be with glass itself. It’s heavy and breaks easily. “Throughout a good portion of the country it is not profitable to ship glass,” says Kirby.

Kirby notes that 200 miles is about the maximum distance one can ship glass from an energy point of view and break even. In the eastern portion of the country, this is doable. Most glass recyclers east of the Mississippi can ship to a processor within this range. However, west of the Mississippi, things get dicey. The vast distances between collectors and processors make transportation costs prohibitive.

KEEP THINGS CLEAR

Color still drives many decisions in recycling glass. “Clear is what everyone wants,” says Louis Perez, vice president of marketing, Norton Environmental, Independence, Ohio.

The big player in the primary market for recycled glass is the container industry. In response to consumer demand, bottlers want clear glass. The demand for brown and green glass is less and is reflective in pricing. Depending upon where you are in the country, clear glass cullet brings from $30 to $60 per ton. Brown brings from $20 to $55 per ton and “lowly” green from $0 to $30 per ton.

Kirby notes that the recycling of brown and green glass is “really a local issue.” If the local processing plant takes brown and green, then it might be economically worthwhile for the glass recycler to handle those colors.

COLOR SORTING

The demand for clear cullet makes the handling of glass a challenge. Consumers will not accept a mixed-color bottle. Clear is least resistant to contamination from brown and green glass.

For recyclers, sorting glass efficiently and economically can mean the difference between realizing a profit or a loss. One of the more promising options to come down the pike in recent years is the optical sorter.

“People are excited about color sort technology,” says Gibboney. “The second generation is on the market.” (For a closer look at this technology, see the box entitled, “New Generation of Glass Optical Sorters.”

BREAKAGE

The problem of color sorting is not the only processing problem that is challenging the glass recycling market.

“Thirty-five to 50% of glass is lost through poor breakage and poor handling,” says Andrews. “Most of the large waste haulers want to handle recyclables as trash. They want to co-mingle glass.”

Gibboney lends support to this viewpoint. “There is a trend to treat recyclables as garbage,” he says. “Co-mingling is still a problem. It’s causing us to lose a substantial amount of glass.”

Norton’s Perez says, “from the processing side, you really don’t want to see it. Glass is abrasive and can shorten the life of any MRF. It wears equipment out and, due to breakage, it’s hazardous to workers.”

Another problem is that of contaminants. The biggest contaminant of all in the primary glass recycling market is ceramics. MRFs frequently use workers to pull ceramics out of the stream.

“People often mistakenly place ceramics, such as broken coffee cups, with the glass to be recycled,” says Gibboney.

“Ceramics are the most troublesome contaminant,” adds Liddy Carter, president of Resource Recovery Systems, Centerbrook, Conn. “Everything else can pretty much be pulled out.”

Kirby notes that ceramics are particularly onerous for container manufacturing plants.

Perhaps GPI’s Gibboney sums it up best when considering the primary markets for recycling glass. “Glass is heavy. It doesn’t matter if it’s broken in transit. The key is for it to be color sorted and contaminant-free. If it is, you have a marketable item.”

SECONDARY MARKETS

But what if it’s not color sorted? In the past this might have been the end of the recycling story. Today, however, innovative uses for mixed-color glass are coming on-line.

“Secondary markets often get the bad rap that it’s not really recycling,” says Cynthia Andela, vice president, Andela Tool & Machine, Inc., Richfield Springs, N.Y. But, she adds, “a lot of people are catching on to the secondary markets.”

CWC’s Kirby seconds this view. He points to the use of glass as a construction or drainage aggregate.

“In the right situations, glass is superior to gravel,” says Kirby. “Its faces are smooth and, therefore, drains better. Further, it doesn’t settle as much.”

If you plan to travel down this nation’s highways and byways this summer, the odds are increasing that where the rubber meets the road it will be doing so over glassphalt. Increasingly, recycled glass is being used in place of sand to make asphalt. And, recycled glass is being used in some areas instead of crushed stone several layers below road surfaces.

Andela, whose firm manufactures a variety of glass pulverizing, breaking and sorting equipment, adds that processed glass, or glass sand, is superior for use in filtration systems.

“Glass sand performs better than regular sand in filtration because of its angularity,” says Andela. “Water goes through the glass sand faster than it does through regular sand. The glass sand not only filters just as well as sand, but it doesn’t clog filters.”

Kirby says that one county in Washington is using all their recycled glass for septic filtration systems.

OTHER USES

Recycled glass is now being used instead of sand in sandblasting. One big advantage to this, according to Andela, is in the safety area. Recycled glass doesn’t have the same structure as sand and does not make harmful silica dust. This means the risk of workers developing silicosis, a chronic lung condition, is eliminated.

Recycled glass has also found a home in use as flooring and wall tile. “People like the look,” says Kirby.

Andela points to using recycled glass to make fiberglass insulation. However, she says that cost effectiveness is a challenge.

Landscapers are taking an interest in recycled glass too. It is being used with compost to make topsoil, according to Kirby.

LOCAL LEVEL

If secondary markets are to grow, the impetus will have to come at the local level.

“Secondary markets are local use issues,” says Andela. “Secondary markets frequently don’t develop because the product is not there to sell. People have to make the supply of recycled glass available.”

Kirby emphasizes that the glass recycling market is stable. “The only way for expansion is through creation of more secondary uses,” he says.

THE BIG PICTURE

What lies ahead for the primary and secondary glass recycling markets? Will the markets remain stable (stagnant may be a better word), or will they enter an era of expansion?

Perhaps the answer lies in the philosophical underpinnings that provide the motivation to recycle glass.

“The feeling in the recycling world is that glass is a big problem,” says Resource Recovery Systems’ Liddy Carter. “It’s my strong belief we have to keep glass in recycling programs. If you can make furnace-ready cullet, it’s not a big problem,” he says of the commodity.

“People who are trying to keep glass out of the recycling stream are missing the point. It’s important to keep tonnage up. Recycled glass provides material that otherwise would have to be taken out of the ground. Glass is a breakeven proposition. If you handle it right, you can do okay with it.”

The author is former editor of Recycling Today.

Sidebar

New Generation of Glass Optical Sorters

Glass optical sorters offer recyclers a means to separate cullet by color and turn lower value mixed broken glass into a higher value product.

 One such system – the MSS MRF Glass Recovery SystemTM – is offered by MSS, Inc., Nashville, Tenn. First, glass must be screened to remove particles below three-eighths of an inch in size then vacuumed to remove paper, labels, and any other light non-glass materials. The glass is then fed into a unit with a vibratory feeder that provides a single layer of glass to maximize performance.

The glass ColorSort ModuleTM then identifies and removes any colored glass to produce a pure clear (flint) output. The ColorSort Module uses twelve digital signal processing assemblies and has the capacity to perform more than 400 million complex instructions per second. User selected color categories are removed with an array of 96 precision air jets.

“The ColorSort Module operates at five tons per hour in color sorting mode and 20 tons per hour in the ceramic removal mode,” says Josh Bickman, MSS marketing director. “Ceramics may be selected for removal while in the color sorting mode.”

 MSS also offers a Three-Mix Processing SystemTM. This system, which can handle up to five tons of glass per hour, is designed for facilities that generate large amounts of mixed color broken glass and provides contamination removal and three color outputs from a dirty three-mix input. The input is first screened and vacuumed to remove non-glass material. The glass is then scanned for ceramic contaminants. Following ceramic removal, one color category is then identified and removed. This is then followed by the identification and removal of a second color category. A third color fraction is left over.

The MSS Glass Beneficiation SystemTM processes dirty three-mix at 15 tons per hour into three color outputs with ceramic removal, according to Bickman. Also, this system has the capability of producing at 40 tons per hour furnace-ready cullet from color separated glass.

“The ability to handle both color separated and dirty three-mix glass provides a strategic advantage to the regional glass processor,” says Bickman.