The problems facing glass recycling in Massachusetts ― and what comes next
With bottles in decline, how can glass be recycled in the Bay State?
The glass bottles piled in those blue recycling bins on curbs across Massachusetts are not likely to be recycled into bottles again these days — at least not around here.
A large glass recycling plant in Franklin closed earlier this year amid losing one of its biggest clients — a Milford glass bottle company owned by the Ardagh Group, which is headquartered in Ireland. The bottle factory, which also shut its doors, in March, was a sizable consumer of the state’s recycled glass.
Now, with the beverage industry’s declining interest in glass bottles, compounded with the fact that glass is already difficult to recycle, experts say the glass recycling business is looking to take on another form.
“There’s a lot of potential opportunities for new markets to take the place of the Ardagh plant,” Greg Cooper, director of business compliance and recycling for the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, told Boston.com.
MassDEP learned that in a difficult way.
Short notice of the bottle factory’s closing and its impacts on Franklin’s Strategic Materials Inc. glass recycling facility left waste management companies, and the state, scrambling for a solution, Cooper said.
With the Strategic Materials — which handled over 100,000 tons of glass in its heyday, according to a company spokeswoman — and the Ardagh Group absent from the local market, the state issued waivers to municipalities and waste companies to allow them to put glass in landfills this year.
The option was in lieu of having it recycled, should they be unable to find an outlet to take it off their hands.
Between February and May, 11,000 tons of glass went to landfills, according to Cooper, who said the state was ultimately able to divert about 4,000 tons from meeting that same fate.
Since the waivers expired in May, MassDEP has got back on its feet and has diverted glass from entering landfills, Cooper said, but now the department is looking at what will come next.
The challenge with glass
Glass bottles, after all, present an issue some in the industry know quite well.Joseph Fusco, vice president of Casella Waste, which collects and breaks down glass, metal, paper, and other recyclables in Massachusetts and other states, said finding a viable use for recycled glass has been a problem.“There’s virtually no market for glass as a recycled material. … It’s virtually worthless and so glass is a problem commodity,” he said.Glass is difficult to work with primarily because its array of colors present a challenge in making it into something new, according to Fusco.“Consumers don’t want muddy looking glass, so if they’re going to reuse a bottle, there are only certain colors that they would be able to reuse,” said Edward Hsieh, executive director of MassRecycle, a nonprofit of government, business, and advocate entities that promote recycling and reducing waste.
Recycling glass also requires a lot of energy and manpower, Hsieh said.
“The markets are disappearing to nonexistent so we all have to find what alternative uses and what alternative technologies we can find,” Fusco said.
Beyond bottles
Recycled glass may find a new home as a material used in road beds, according to Hsieh. The practice, which takes glass and grinds it up to be a road construction aggregate, is already being done in parts of Massachusetts.“I think that’s the future right now,” said Chris Carney, owner of Raynham-based C. Carney Environmental, which is currently taking glass off the hands of 35 municipalities for $85 a ton and shredding it up. “You’re able to get rid of it. … You’re basically turning it back into the sand that it was when it first started.”Carney was breaking down glass before this year but saw his business pick up once the Franklin facility closed. He’s open to considering other ways glass can be recycled, but he doesn’t see the glass bottle market bouncing back, especially with the tariffs recycling businesses are facing from China, which recently put new taxes on American scrap exports after clamping down on recycled exports from the U.S. last year.“I just don’t see anything on the horizon in the next six months to a year at least,” Carney said. “But at least for the time being the material is being disposed either way.”In recent months, Cooper has heard of other potential opportunities for glass recycling, such as using glass in a lightweight fill material or turning it into fiberglass.“I don’t know how viable it is but the most promising might be as a building material and as an aggregate not only in road beds but also in land shaping,” Fusco said, adding that use in insulation is another possibility.Laura Hennemann, vice president of marketing and communications for Strategic Materials, said the national company primarily takes glass to be made into containers and fiberglass — the latter of which has a higher market value than road fill.When the Franklin facility shuttered its doors — and subsequently another facility in Rhode Island — most of the surplus glass was brought to one of Strategic Material’s Connecticut sites or shipped out of New England, she said.“We have some potential solutions that we’re working on, just nothing that we can share right now,” Hennemann said when asked about what the company’s future in Massachusetts looks like.
Looking ahead
As the market works to figure out which way it will turn, Kirstie Pecci, director of the Zero Waste Project at the Conservation Law Foundation, said she’s hopeful that glass could come back as a packaging material.“Glass as a material I think will bounce back because I think plastic is on the way out,” she said.But the state should also incentivize the reuse of glass bottles — an approach considered more environmentally friendly than recycling because it doesn’t require as much as energy, Pecci said.“We need to decrease the amount of waste we use across the board so the best way to do that is programs that incentivize reducing trash,” she said.In order to encourage new markets for glass recycling, MassDEP has put some money on the line. Cooper said the department is issuing business grants to find new recycling markets. And on Wednesday, MassDEP announced the latest towns to receive a grant aimed at helping municipalities crush glass at their own facilities so the material can benefit local and state public works projects.The towns of Dennis and Groton were given a total of $257,000 for the efforts, according to a press release, which touted the option as a productive and cost-effective option for filling the gap left by the Ardagh factory.“We’re feeling much more comfortable than we were back in February I can tell you that but there’s still a lot … going on,” Cooper said.
