Dive summary:
- Glass may be recycled again in Rhode Island after months where residents put glass in the recycling bin only for it to end up in landfills.
- Glass was used as landfill cover for the past 10 years but a recent ban on using construction material as landfill cover resulted in tons of glass being sent to landfills.
- In April, the Rhode Island Resource Recovery Corporation will start sending its glass to Strategic Materials Inc., a glass recycler in Franklin, Mass. until a better solution is found.
From the article:
The RIRRC receives 20,000 to 25,000 tons of glass per year. After the glass was banned, other materials, such as gravel and virgin soil, had to be brought in to cover the landfill.
When residents caught wind of the glass' final resting place, many were "understandably upset," Kite said. The RIRRC urged residents to continue putting glass in their recycling bins while an alternative was arranged.
Up until the early 2000s, the RIRRC had sent glass to Strategic Materials Inc., a glass recycler in Franklin, Mass., for processing. After the law took effect, the RIRRC began looking into reopening that relationship. But the crushed glass coming out of Rhode Island's recovery facility was heavily contaminated by shredded paper from single-stream collection and not up to SMI's standards. ...
