Did you know that an American startup is turning bottles into eco-friendly sand?

The problem of sand shortage as a natural resource is very large. According to statistics, the demand for sand is around 30-50 billion tonnes per year. And although this material is renewable, not in the quantity we need today. This is why the start-up Glass Half Full addressed such an important topic as recycling sand from glass.

Even a single glass bottle, discarded in the city's rubbish bin, will contribute to its contents ending up in a landfill, where it will never decompose. Annually, New Orleans spends millions of dollars on landfill disposal, as well as importing sand.

Franziska Trautmann, who is the founder and CEO of Glass Half Full, said that after the beer bottles are collected and sorted, the glass is processed by pulverising it with hammer crushers at a local facility on Louisa St. The crushed product is later sieved to remove labels and sorted into different sized pellets. The final product ranges from super-soft, reminiscent of sand on a warm beach, to coarse glass gravel.

Sand and cullet can be used for a myriad of applications. From shoreline restoration and disaster relief to flooring and new glass products.

In 2 years, 4 million bottles were collected in New Orleans. In this way, glass 'waste' is transformed into a resource that actually benefits the community.

Source: https://glasshalffull.co/.