Is glass biodegradable?
Last but not least, glass takes one million years to decompose in the environment, perhaps even more in a landfill.
In total, that’s about four major problems with glass that impact the environment.
Now, let’s analyze the lifecycle of glass bit closer.
how glass is made:
Glass is made from all-natural resources, such as sand, soda ash, limestone and recycled glass.
However, it is important to note that we’re running out of the sand that’s used to make glass in the first place.
Worldwide, we go through 50 billion tons of sand every year. That is twice the amount produced by every river in the world.
Once these raw materials are harvested, they’re transported to a batch house where they are inspected and then sent to the furnace for melting, where they’re heated to 2600 to 2800 degrees Fahrenheit.
Afterwards, they go through conditioning, forming, and the finishing process before becoming the final product.
Once the final product is created, it’s transported so it can be washed and sterilized, then transported again to stores for sale or use.
Once it comes to its end of life, it’s (hopefully) collected and recycled.
Unfortunately, each year only one-third of the roughly 10 million metric tons of glass that Americans throw away is recycled.
The rest goes to a landfill.
When glass is collected and recycled, it has to begin this process of being transported, going through batch preparation, and everything else that follows again.
recycling rates:
If a glass manufacturing facility used 50 percent recycled content to make new glass, then there would be a 10 percent decrease in GWP.
In other words, the 50 percent recycle rate would remove 2.2 million metric tons of CO2 from the environment.
That’s the equivalent of removing CO2 emissions of nearly 400,000 cars every year.
However, this would only happen assuming at least 50 percent of glass was recycled properly and used to make new glass.
Currently, only 40 percent of glass thrown into single-stream recycling collections actually gets recycled.
While glass is completely recyclable, unfortunately, there are certain facilities that choose to crush the glass and use it as a landfill cover instead.
This is cheaper than actually recycling the glass, or finding another cover material for landfills. Cover material for landfills are a mix of organic, inorganic and inert components (such as glass).
glass as a landfill cover?
Landfill covers are used to control the offensive smells landfills give off, deter pests, prevent waste fires, discourage scavenging, and limit rainwater runoff.
Unfortunately, using glass to cover landfills doesn’t help the environment or reduce emissions because it’s essentially downcycling glass and preventing it from being reused.
Make sure you look into your local recycling laws before you recycle glass, just to double check it’ll actually be recycled.
Glass recycling is a closed-loop system, so it doesn’t create any additional waste or by-products.
