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Our goal is to help build recycling ecosystems for materials where current recycling models aren't effective or don't exist. Our focal point is glass, but we look forward to partnering with area stakeholders and other regional recycling businesses to keep additional material out of landfills.
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Keeping material hyper local improves the environmental footprint and economic viability of our recycling. We’ve established our recycling operation here in Chattanooga and are focusing on opportunities for local customers to leverage our materials—closing the loop locally! And remember, every ton of our materials is a direct offset for sand and aggregate that is mined locally. Using our recycled glass products will help conserve our region’s natural resources!
Sign up nowWe’ll promote those businesses and organizations that partner with us to both recycle and locally use recycled glass products. We’ll work to get our products in the hands of area schools and non profits.
Seeing is believing—when our facility opens later this summer we’ll host an open house and special events for our customers where you can bring your glass to our production site, see it recycled before your eyes, and take materials home with you!
We’re investing in collections and processing equipment that can provide enough capacity for all of the glass waste in our area. Our goal is to be a partner that can move the needle for regional stakeholders' recycling and zero waste goals
Sign up nowThe Scenic City, River City, Hill City, Gig City–Chattanooga has a lot of nicknames! Let’s try another one on for size: Glass City. It may not roll off the tongue easily, but it rings true. Or at least it did ring true. Chattanooga was once the glass capital of the South.
Read MoreMy family and I moved to Chattanooga in early 2021 with 3 young daughters in tow. We were living in Germany at the time, and the weight of the pandemic was bearing down on us. As my wife and I contemplated this next step in life, it was important for us to find a community where we could see ourselves raising our family.
Read MoreGlass recycling is tricky, especially for mid-sized cities like Chattanooga. Did you catch our note about that truck making a ~250 mile return journey to pickup our glass? This happens because there is no local processing of glass. To set up a processing facility that can clean and sort glass efficiently, you need A LOT glass.
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Glass is fundamentally a 100% recyclable material. However, glass has a lower recovery value compared with other recyclables like aluminum, tin, and cardboard. The collection & processing of glass introduces all sorts of safety and maintenance challenges into single stream recycling processes. As a result, glass is not collected curbside in the much of the US.
Here in the Chattanooga region, more than 90% of post-consumer glass is not recycled. That’s more than 10,000 tons per year in our area which ends up in area landfills. The volume of glass that residents do recycle is processed in a way which is economically and environmentally unsustainable. Trucks make ~250 mile roundtrip journeys to pick up the glass, and it currently costs the City of Chattanooga and other area municipalities more to recycle than it would to send the glass to a landfill.
Couple of things to unpack here!
The drop off recycling centers are usually restricted to residents only. This means that businesses—restaurants, hotels, offices, etc.—cannot use the drop off points. More than half of all glass waste comes from non-residential entities, and almost all of this “commercial” glass ends up in a landfill.
For residents, when you recycle with us you’ll not only save your time, but by eliminating the collective thousands of inefficient miles driven to drop off recyclables, we expect to conservatively reduce the carbon footprint of your recycling efforts by >75%. (Contact us if you want to talk our math!)
Not at all! The equipment we use leverages a patented process to mill and tumble glass. The resulting products are certainly rough (think coarse sand and gravel), but the sharp edges are gone. In effect, we do through milling what takes mother nature years to create through sea glass.
What to put in the bin:
What not to put in the bin
Feel free to send us a question if you are uncertain!
Contact us to learn more. We’ll strive to answer your questions as transparently as possible.
