Ecologists offer secondary utilization of glass as sand
Glass processing in Western markets is an expensive and not always profitable enterprise. As an alternative to the processing of glass products, environmentalists suggest making them into ... sand.
It sounds strange: sand made of glass made from sand ... But this method has been practiced for some time by the municipality of the city of Warner, USA. Here, bottles and cans used by residents are ground and used as a replacement for gravel and sand for construction purposes. Glass sand is not inferior to gravel in anything and even surpasses it in "frost resistance" and the ability to cope with the expansion and contraction of liquids in winter.
"We do this with an old, slightly modified crusher," says Tim Allen, director of public works at Warner.
According to Allen, in a year they produce from 80 to 90 tons of glass sand. It is used together with gravel and natural sand (or even instead of them) for the construction of various objects, for example, road barriers.
This method of secondary use brings the city a double financial benefit. Glass is used instead of imported materials, and the municipality does not spend money on its expensive processing.
Warren is not alone in his desire to recycle glass into construction materials. In neighboring New London, they plan to use recycled glass sand as a road surface, safe for car tires. And the plant in Philadelphia is developing a way to use glass as a binder in the manufacture of concrete.
"Less and less products on the market are packed in glass, manufacturers increasingly prefer plastic. Glass recycling back into glass is unprofitable," said Jamie Colby from the solid waste recycling department of the Department of Environmental Services. - In order to create a clean, transparent bottle of a certain color from the waste, you must observe hundreds of precautions. One unnoticed lid or ceramic shard can spoil the entire mixture, and this is about a ton of liquid glass."
"Therefore, the possibility of using glass as construction material, including for roads, casing pipes and fillers around the retaining walls and foundations - is an outlet for the whole" glass "sector," Colby said.
The only restriction in the use of glass sand - it must be isolated from the environment. Whatever it was, the processing technology is not yet perfect, and large pieces of glass can harm others.
Glass is not the only material that can be recycled and reused. There is a long list of what is called certified waste: mollusk shells that can be used as a cover around access roads; The spent kieselguhr is a filtration material that can be used instead of silt; old asphalt shingles, which can be turned into asphalt for roads and many, many others.
The environmental benefits of recycling are undeniable. They include not only simplifying the storage of recycled material, but also significant resource savings, because the production of goods from recycled raw materials almost always requires less energy than creating it from scratch.
