It's the last thing any conscientious recycler would want to see - glass bottles that could be melted down and remade into new products instead taking up space in a landfill.
But the harsh reality is that curbside pickup of recycles doesn't work best when it comes to finding a reuse for glass materials. The City of Knoxville is taking steps to reverse the growing national trend and divert glass here from reaching landfills - but City officials need feedback from City residents. (More on that below.)
Starting Jan. 1, 2017, glass will no longer be accepted in the City of Knoxville curbside single-stream recycling program. Instead, residents are encouraged to bring glass to any of the City’s five drop-off recycling centers.
As part of the City’s single-stream process, residents drop recyclables into curbside carts for pickup. The materials are unloaded in a large compacting truck, dumped on a recycling facility’s concrete tipping floor and sorted on a conveyor belt – causing the glass to break into small pieces.
That causes two problems:
(1) The intermingled mix of many different kinds of glass produces a very low-quality glass commodity, for which there’s no market; and
(2) The glass slivers and particles contaminate other recyclables, downgrading their quality and market value.
“Many communities across the country have reached the same conclusion – that placing glass in single stream, with other recyclable materials like plastic, paper and aluminum, is not the best way to recycle glass,” said Rachel Butzler, the City’s Solid Waste Manager.
“It’s unfortunate, because curbside pickup is so convenient. But because the glass gets broken and commingled, its value is eroded and it has no market. As a result, much of the glass that’s intended for recycling winds up going to the landfill."
In addition to curbside glass recyclables, the change also affects any single-stream receptacle that is serviced by the City – including those in public parks, downtown and in other public spaces.
However, glass can still be recycled. Glass separated by color at any of the City’s five recycling drop-off centers is much higher quality, so the City’s contractor is better able to find a market for it and divert it from the landfill.
Here’s a link to more information and locations of City of Knoxville, Knox County and University of Tennessee recycling drop-off centers: http://bit.ly/2hceNFE
The City is gathering input from residents about ways to improve the operation of the drop-off centers – including the possibility of adding new locations to make it easier for residents to recycle glass.
Help us make it easier for more Knoxvillians to recycle their glass bottles. To take part in a survey, please click on this link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/BFXV2Q2.
By the way, the problems with finding markets for commingled, different-colored broken glasses aren't new. Click HERE to read a detailed 2015 Wall Street Journal report that explores the difficulty of recycling glass when shipments to national processors may contain as much as 50 percent non-glass contaminants.