How & Where Is Glass Recycled?

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Lynn Bestul. I'm the Solid Waste Planner for New Hanover County in North Carolina. I'm here today to talk to you a little bit about where and how glass is recycled. That glass that you start out at your house with and you drink that soda out of, when you throw it into the recycling bin, it goes to a recycling facility. The glass behind me is getting ready to be shipped off to an actual recycler. This is just the storage location until it gets recycled. Once it goes to that glass re-manufacturing facility, what they will do, they'll crush the glass, they'll sort it by color, and they'll use what's called an optical sorter that shoots, like, an infrared light through the glass and determines the color based on the speed of it going through the glass. And once it's separated and washed, that glass is then shipped off and it's melted down at the facility. And it would be returned to the glass bottles again or glass jars. Some of this glass has been broken out and they've used it in other projects. They've been able to take the ground-up glass and mix it with asphalt and put that on some of the roadways. They have that in different areas where it has been tested. They've also mixed glass in small areas with beach sand to help with erosion. So it's a very good product that can be used out there, and glass is one of those items that can continuously be recycled over and over. Those are some of the facts I have for you today about recycling glass and how it...how it's recycled and where it goes."