Unlocking the Potential of Glass Recycling

The Glass Recycling Foundation has opened the application period for more grants to support equipment, education, and pilot projects that improve glass recycling. This includes equipment upgrades for cleaning recycled glass; setting up collection containers for glass drop-off points; and improving education for residents.

The foundation recently released its 2022 Impact Report highlighting almost $200,000 in grants to support the diversion of glass from landfills. Donations from Anheuser-Busch Foundation, Corona, the Glass Packaging Institute, and Diageo made these grants possible.

Laura Hennemann is the SVP of Sustainability and Corporate Affairs for Strategic Materials Inc. (SMI) and a board member of the Glass Recycling Foundation. SMI is a company that processes recycled glass and plastic for use in a range of products. It is the largest glass recycler in North America, and it operates in 46 locations—primarily in the U.S. but also in Canada and Mexico.

“A lot of times, we are the ones recycling the glass to get it back into industry: into glass container manufacturing or fiberglass installation,” Hennemann remarked in an interview with MSW Management. “We’ve got some secondary markets that we try to prioritize by highest investments.”

“In comparison to other materials in the stream, glass is recyclable forever,” she said. “You can endlessly recycle a bottle, and it’s one bottle in, one bottle out—whereas other materials in the stream degrade over time and can only be recycled so many times.”

In discussing initiatives funded by the foundation and the overall impact, Hennemann explained, “It’s being able to select projects that will essentially be working with startup funding, to get that push over the barrier to make glass recycling work, and to create more of a long-term sustainable program without the additional funding needed after that. For us, it’s almost like seed money to make sure that push is there to make it work. We focus a lot on expansion, incremental tons. Sometimes it’s improving existing glass recycling programs or systems, but we also want to make sure we’re helping to increase recovery rates in the U.S.”

From her perspective, the biggest challenges are keeping glass in curbside programs and educating cities, counties, municipalities, and MRFs on the value of keeping glass in the stream. “The education builds on the collection side, but better education on the residential side to help reduce contamination—those are the things we see as opportunities and challenges,” she said.

“Another encouraging thing we’re seeing is that a lot of materials recovery facilities are starting to make investments to better process the glass, which helps downstream with contamination and value of the material we’re receiving,” Hennemann shared. 

SMI acquired Ripple Glass, a Kansas City-based glass recycler, in September of last year. “Our partnership will springboard the Ripple collection model nationwide and bring glass recycling to underserved areas,” according to Greg Orman of Ripple Glass. 

As the largest glass recycler in North America, SMI has to ensure that it offers a lot of different collection methods, according to Hennemann—either a substitute for or a complement to existing programs—and especially in underserved areas. 

“We advocate for curbside first and foremost, because it is high volume, it’s tied directly to convenience, there are not a lot of behavioral changes, and we’re not treating any of the material differently as far as source separation,” she said. “When that isn’t working, or it’s in an area where it can’t work, then we have options to provide.”

Hennemann added that they are also a key support for downstream manufacturing to operate more sustainably with recycled glass, which melts at a lower temperature than virgin materials, saving energy and CO2 emissions.

Scott DeFife is the president of both the Glass Packaging Institute and the Glass Recycling Foundation. He explained to MSW Management that the Glass Packaging Institute, or GPI, is the trade association representing container manufacturers and glass recyclers. He has served as the president of the GPI for nearly four years and as president of the Glass Recycling Foundation (GRF) for over three years.

DeFife was involved in waste management and recycling before joining the GPI. He ran all of the federal and state affairs, policy, and communications for the National Restaurant Association, including the sustainability committee and the supply chain management executive study group. He credits this work with sparking his interest in packaging. 

Following a period of organization and preparation, the GRF’s grant program began in earnest in 2021. They expanded in 2022, and are trying to build on that in 2023, according to DeFife.

He noted that the GRF includes other end markets like fiberglass and aggregates. “The foundation works with the Glass Recycling Coalition, which is a broad volunteer coalition of interested parties,” he said. “It’s not all glass containers.” 

The overall goal for the foundation is to work with others in the value chain to increase the availability of recycled content. “People need access to more recycled content,” said DeFife. “Those that are interested in recycled glass are largely using every available ton we can find and get access to. That which we can’t get heads to the landfill.” 

His role at the Glass Packaging Institute involves things like policy, advocacy, problem-solving, and gap. “The GRF is really there as one of the tools that the industry has,” he explained. “When a community wants to do something with glass recycling, we can backfill with support to get them started or to expand. In our first year, most of our grants were for smaller rural communities just trying to get started.”

In addition to funding grants to small communities for glass recycling, the GRF also helped run a pilot program in Chicago. The Don’t Trash Glass (DTG) Program, which included the Glass Recycling Foundation, Constellation Brands, GlassKing, Lakeshore Recycling, and SMI, was designed to collect glass containers at bars and restaurants Greater Chicago area to be recycled into new bottles, fiberglass, and other items. “We have done similar projects all around the country with the GRF,” DeFife noted. 

Funding has grown from a cap of $10,000 per project to $20,000 per project, he shared, and the GRF has tripled the number of grantees. “We had three times as many grant applications in 2022 as we did in 2021,” he added. “We’re looking to increase that again in 2023, hence our solicitation for new grants in the second quarter of 2023.”

The foundation also puts effort into helping projects that don’t receive funding to find another source of funding or to rework their proposal to apply for a grant in the future. “That worked in North Carolina last year,” DeFife said. “One community came to us with an idea that didn’t get funded. The dollars per ton didn’t make too much sense the first time they presented their idea. Then they came back in the second round with a revised proposal and we ended up funding them. That led to collaboration with the state of North Carolina. The GRF matched some state funding coming in to fund five projects in the state.”

“It’s seed money to get things going, to showcase pilots and alternative collection methodologies that can be replicated in other communities of similar size and budget,” he explained. “We try to fund a variety of different modes of collection in the beginning because we’re just getting started, and we want to showcase a variety of ways of getting this done.”

The GRF has an informal goal of working directly with a MRF in the next year. “We’re open to receiving a grant proposal for MRF equipment, glass cleanup equipment, things like that,” commented DeFife. “There are some fundamental principles we adhere to that I think are the most important thing—getting people who are interested to create a coalition and come back with a grant proposal. We need you to be connected to some sort of local government entity that’s going to help promote and gather and solve an issue for an area. It’s not just private money to private sector businesses that want to expand their business.”

He cited the proposal submitted by Prism Glass Recycling as an example. Prism Recycling spearheaded a drop-off pilot program through a public-private partnership that included the Erie County Recycling Program, the Erie Area Council of Governments, CAP Glass Recycling, and the Glass Recycling Foundation. The objective of the program was to close the recycling loop for glass. Prism was successful because it had worked directly with Erie County to set up collection points around the county.

“There was a letter from the mayor and the city council saying, ‘We support this, we’re collaborating with this group, and the support you give us will help us deploy more collection points within Erie.’ That showed initiative, collaboration with the local government, [and] some skin in the game from the government side to promote these collection points to its citizens,” he said.