NEW JERSEY - In the early days of recycling, glass was one of the materials that made it worthwhile.
Consumers or recycling centers sorted used glass containers according to color. Utilities authorities sold truckloads of recycled glass to companies that turned it into new glass containers.
But in the past 30 years, cracks have developed in the glass-recycling process.
Most glass manufacturers in southern New Jersey quit buying recycled glass for reuse because it was too easily contaminated. One plant in Cumberland County still buys small quantities - but only clear.
As prices for recycled glass fell and the cost of fuel for transporting it increased, it started to cost more to move recycled glass than it was worth.
And once glass is broken or crushed for possible reuse, it becomes highly abrasive and expensive just to handle.
The result: Glass recycling no longer makes economic sense.
Glass now costs recycling companies money. They could pay more for recyclables collected by counties and municipalities if those loads didn't contain glass.
And most glass containers collected in southern New Jersey now are transported, ground up and put in landfills anyway - as temporary cover for the trash being dumped there.
That's probably not environmentally friendly. If the glass were put directly into the landfill with the rest of the trash, the energy use and pollution from the additional truck transport and mechanical processing would be avoided.
Negative worth
Omni Recycling in Gloucester Township, Camden County, was southern New Jersey's first single-stream recycler. It buys unsorted recyclables from many government agencies, including the Atlantic County Utilities Authority.
Kevin Carducci, plant manager, said this month that Omni and most other recyclers would prefer not to have any glass in those loads of recyclables.
Omni extracts the glass and crushes it. Most ends up as a sand-like aggregate with pieces less than 3/8-inch. That gets shipped to a landfill for use as cover, he said.
The larger pieces that remain get sent to another facility for sorting and possible recycling. "We pay to have that hauled away," Carducci said.
Leone Industries in Bridgeton is one of the few companies buying recycled glass. It buys mostly bora silicate glass, but it accepts some consumer glass as long as it is clear.
Clear recycled bottles are worth about $24 per ton, according to Scrapindex.com. But mixed scrap glass is worth just $4.50 per ton.
Do the math: A 30-ton truckload would be worth $135, not enough to pay for the diesel, truck, insurance and driver to take it very far.
Fred Neary, a representative for FCR Recycling in Camden, another processor of Atlantic County recyclables, said glass costs the company money.
"It has a negative value to us and most processors in this area," Neary said.
Glass vs. plastic
The Atlantic County Utilities Authority has an impressive record of environmental innovation.
In 1988, it was the first county in the state to start recycling plastics. It pioneered turning yard waste into compost and reselling it in the region. And it built the East Coast's first wind farm in 2005 in Atlantic City.
Richard Dovey, the authority's longtime president, said glass recycling no longer is economically viable.
"You don't get much for it, and the cost of getting it to that point is very much cost-prohibitive," Dovey said.
He said 25 years ago, when there was a local market for recycled glass at Cumberland County plants, glass was valuable and a driver of recycling efforts. Now, some specialty plants still accept glass, but "their specifications are so tight that they're difficult to achieve."
Meanwhile, the plastics that began as such a challenge to recycle have turned out to be easier and less costly to handle, and much more valuable.
Recycled plastics on the spot market typically fetch about $440 per ton - about 100 times as valuable as recycled glass.
"The glass and plastic price ratio has flipped in the last 25 years," Dovey said.
And there's much more plastic to recycle.
There were 12.7 million tons of glass and only 2.9 million tons of plastic in the U.S. municipal waste stream in 1970, according to Environmental Protection Agency data gathered by Franklin Associates.
In 2006 - the most recent data available - glass wasn't much changed at 13.2 million tons. But plastics now account for 29.5 million tons of municipal waste each year.
One reason is that since they are lighter and don't shatter into dangerously sharp pieces, plastic containers increasingly are used for consumer products rather than glass.
On the home front
Leah Drobel, of Egg Harbor Township, was surprised to hear Wednesday that there is no market for recycled glass.
"Wow, that's disappointing," she said, adding that at least it's not going into the landfill.
Then she was told most recycled glass ends up in landfills anyway.
"We go to the trouble to rinse it, put it in recycling buckets and then put it out, and it's not even used?" Drobel said. "So why are we recycling glass? We should just be trashing it."
Adrianne Larson, of Northfield, has been separating and putting out her recyclables for more than 20 years.
She said Wednesday she had noticed a single sentence in an Atlantic County Utilities Authority recycling insert in her newspaper. It said there was no market for recycled glass.
"It really disturbed me when I read that," Larson said. She called the ACUA, and they confirmed it.
"That kind of worries me, that a lot of people are taking the time to put out glass and there's no market for it," she said. "Is it worth our while, or are we just wasting money?"
Time to stop?
There is no specific mandate to recycle glass or anything else, the ACUA's Dovey said - just a state requirement to recycle where it makes economic sense.
So why does glass recycling continue?
"It's tradition. Almost everybody in this business started with that, and it's hard to give up," Dovey said. "I'm not aware of anything that is likely to turn it around."
One force pushing against the expense of glass recycling is the strain on government budgets in a slumping economy. Dovey agreed the pressure on municipal and government budgets is only going to get worse - and eventually might help shift opinion about glass recycling.
"It's really giving up the ghost, and it's hard to do," he said.
"We're not ready to do that. I'm ready to start talking about it, but you almost have to get people used to the idea," Dovey said.
from press of Atlantic City
