Did you know that an American startup turns bottles into ecological sand?

The problem of the lack of sand as a natural raw material is very big. According to statistics, the demand for sand is approx. 30-50 billion tons per year. And although this material is renewable, not in the quantities we need today. That’s why the Glass Half Full startup tackled such an important topic as glass sand recycling.

Even one glass bottle thrown into the city waste bin will result in its contents ending up in a landfill, where they will never decompose. New Orleans spends millions of dollars annually on landfills and on 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 pulverizing it using hammer crushers at a local facility on Louisa St. The crushed product is later screened to remove labels and sorted into different sized granules. Finally, we get sand products – from super soft, resembling sand on a warm beach, to thick glass gravel.

Sand and crushed stone can be put to countless uses. From shoreline restoration and disaster relief to flooring and new glass products.

Within 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/ .