This week on Possibly we weigh the different methods of recycling glass: single-stream, multi-stream and bottle bills. Could switching to a different recycling system make more sense for your community?

Megan Hall: Welcome to Possibly, where we take on huge problems like the future of our planet and break them down into small questions with unexpected answers. I’m Megan Hall.

A few months ago, we did an episode about how the US only recycles about a third of the glass that we use. But there’s actually a lot more to the story.

We had Leo Nachamie and Nat Hardy from our Possibly Team look into it.

Leo Nachamie: Hey Megan!

Nat Hardy: Hello!

Megan Hall: Okay, so refresh my memory… why isn’t glass getting recycled?

Leo Nachamie: Well, there’s two main things to consider -first…what to do with the glass: where to transport it, and what to turn it into. That’s what we talked about last time….

Nat Hardy: But there’s another factor to consider—the quality of the glass: how uniform it is, the cleanliness, and the color.

Megan Hall: Tell me about that!

Leo Nachamie: Let’s follow a glass bottle in the US. Once it’s made at a glass factory, it’s shipped to a store where someone buys it.

Nat Hardy: Then someone brings it home, uses whatever is inside, and then hopefully recycles it.

Leo Nachamie: But that last step, recycling the glass bottle, looks different depending on where you live. And this can impact its value.

Megan Hall: Don’t we all just put our recycling into one bin?

Nat Hardy: That’s one system…

Collin Wilkinson: In the United States, single stream, curbside pickup is the most common. You put all your recyclables in one bin. Somebody with a big truck comes along, picks it all up, takes care of it, sends it off.

Nat Hardy: That’s Collin Wilkinson, an assistant professor of glass science and engineering at Alfred University.

Leo Nachamie: He says there’s also multi-stream recycling. Instead of everything going into one bin, households sort out their recycling by material, and it’s picked up by different trucks.

Megan Hall: But either way, the glass bottle I recycled goes to the same place, right?

Leo Nachamie: It depends. With multi-stream, sometimes glass is brought right to specific processors. Other times glass is brought to recycling plants, like the single stream stuff.

Nat Hardy: At those plants, everything gets sorted into what can and can’t be recycled.

Leo Nachamie: As you might expect, recycling that’s all mixed together needs a lot more sorting.

Collin Wilkinson: So the sorting technology can range everywhere, from incredibly sophisticated machines that is able to use air streams to actually singularly push off a shred of glass into the right bin. This is incredibly useful innovative technology, but it is not widely accessible due to the cost of it.

Nat Hardy: Recycling plants in wealthy areas might be able to justify these very efficient sorting systems. But for others, especially in rural areas, this type of investment might not make sense.

Leo Nachamie: So a lot of recycling plants use a combination of machinery and workers that sort materials by hand, which can be dangerous for the people handling glass.

Megan Hall: So how does all of this affect how often glass gets recycled?

Leo Nachamie: Glass that’s contaminated is worth less money. That means it’s less likely to be recycled.

Nat Hardy: And, when cities and towns throw all of their recycling in one bin, it’s harder to sort out the glass – so it’s more likely to get contaminated.

Megan Hall: I get it! So, should we start sorting our recycling into separate bins?

Nat Hardy: Well, it’s hard to say… single stream is popular for a reason. It makes recycling easy for households, and it cuts down on transportation costs since all the recycling goes into one truck.

Leo Nachamie: So communities really have to weigh the transportation costs of multi-stream versus the sorting and contamination costs of single stream.

Megan Hall: Are there any other options?

Nat Hardy: States can pass bottle bills, which put a small deposit on glass bottles. When consumers return their bottles, they get their money back.

Leo Nachamie: This incentivizes people to sort the glass themselves, and those who don’t want to can still participate in regular systems like single-stream.

Megan Hall: Okay, so there are a few different ways we can tackle glass recycling. What’s the big picture?

Nat Hardy: The solution goes back to those two factors we talked about at the beginning. We have to preserve the quality of glass in a cheap way while making it easier for the glass to get recycled.

Leo Nachamie: That might mean introducing bottle bills or switching to multi-stream. But there’s no one size fits all solution.

Megan Hall: Great! Thanks, Leo and Nat!

That’s it for today. You can find more information, or ask a question about the ways your choices affect our planet, at ask possibly dot org. You can also subscribe to Possibly wherever you get your podcasts or follow us on social media at “ask possibly”

Possibly is a co-production of Brown University’s Institute for Environment and Society, Ocean State Media and WBRU.

The post What’s Holding Back Glass Recycling in the US? appeared first on TPR: The Public’s Radio.

The post What’s Holding Back Glass Recycling in the US? appeared first on Possibly.

Only about a third of the glass used in the U.S. gets recycled. That’s much lower than Europe, where some countries have recycling rates above 90%. So what gives? And what can we do about it?

Megan Hall: Welcome to Possibly, where we take on huge problems like the future of our planet and break them down into small questions with unexpected answers. I’m Megan Hall.

In the U.S., we only recycle about a third of the glass that we use, and states like Rhode Island don’t recycle any glass. But in some European countries, the average recycling rate for glass is about 80 percent. Why are our rates so low?

We had Leo Nachamie and Nat Hardy from our Possibly team look into this question.

Leo Nachamie: Hey, Megan!

Nat Hardy: Hello!

Megan Hall: So, what’s the problem with our glass recycling system?

Leo Nachamie: Well, before we start, it’s important to know there are a lot of factors that go into whether glass is recycled or not.

Nat Hardy: But what most of those factors boil down to is that in our current system, it’s often cheaper to use raw materials instead of recycled glass.

Megan Hall: Why’s that?

Leo Nachamie: One reason is that glass is difficult to transport. It’s heavy, and in rural areas, the distance between a recycling facility and a glass factory can be really far.

Nat Hardy: And if shipping prices are high, it’s hard for recycled glass suppliers to compete with the people that sell the raw materials for glass.

Megan Hall: Are there other costs associated with using recycled glass?

Nat Hardy: Well, when glass gets recycled, it isn’t all the same. There are different colors and thicknesses, and some of it is really dirty.

Leo Nachamie: And when you recycle glass, all of those factors really matter. Some glass is so low quality, it can only be used for things like insulation.

Megan Hall: Okay, so it seems like there really isn’t a huge market for glass recycling.

Leo Nachamie: In more rural areas, that can totally be the case. But, when people use glass and put it into recycling bins near glass factories, the recycling process goes pretty smoothly.

Nat Hardy: And, there is an incentive for glass factories to recycle glass.

Megan Hall: What’s that?

Nat Hardy: Since used glass has already gone through the initial melting process, it melts at lower temperatures than raw materials.

Leo Nachamie: So the more used glass you throw into a glass mix, the lower the furnaces need to run.

Nat Hardy: This means manufacturers use less energy, which saves them money and creates less emissions. It also causes less wear and tear on their melting furnaces.

Leo Nachamie: And using recycled glass offers another environmental win. When you melt raw materials to make glass, some of the ingredients create carbon pollution. Using more recycled glass  means less of that!

Megan Hall: Alright, so using recycled glass helps manufacturers and the environment, but the cost of transporting it and the problems with quality control can discourage factories from using it. How can we work around these drawbacks?

Leo Nachamie: To answer this, we spoke to Collin Wilkinson, an assistant professor of glass science and engineering at Alfred University.

Collin Wilkinson: One of the challenges with this is that there is no answer that fits everybody. It is really a local problem, local solution that we need to be looking for.

Nat Hardy: Different solutions might work better for different states.

Colin Wilkinson: In New York state, we have plenty of glass manufacturers who are willing to consume the glass if we can get it to them, right? So maybe in New York state, it makes a lot of sense to incentivize shipping whenever possible.

Leo Nachamie: But in a state like Rhode Island, where there’s no one to buy used glass, it might be better to invest in a local facility to turn it into something other than bottles, like roadbed or foam glass insulation.

Megan Hall: Alright, so it seems like there are a lot of great steps we can take locally to increase our recycling rate. How does policy come into this?

Leo Nachamie: Well, some states have bottle bills, which encourage people to recycle their glass by providing a cash incentive.

Nat Hardy: And states like California have laws that require a certain amount of glass products to be made from recycled materials.

Leo Nachamie: California also just passed a law to subsidize glass manufacturers who use recycled materials.

Nat Hardy: In general, there are two ways to encourage glass recycling. The carrot, like paying people to recycle, or the stick, like fining people for not.

Leo Nachamie: We just have to create systems that make the most sense for each community.

Megan Hall: Great! Thanks, Leo and Nat!

That’s it for today. You can find more information, or ask a question about the way your choices affect our planet, at askpossibly.org. You can also subscribe to Possibly wherever you get your podcasts or follow us on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Bluesky at  “askpossibly”

Possibly is a co-production of Brown University’s Institute for Environment and Society, Brown’s Climate Solutions Initiative, and Ocean State Media.

The post Why is the US glass recycling rate so low? appeared first on TPR: The Public’s Radio.

The post Why is the US glass recycling rate so low? appeared first on Possibly.