To start, partnerships are key. Working in tandem, the food service businesses, hauler/recycler, and glass processor can more effectively ensure the recycled glass gets to a glass container manufacturer. And cities and counties that initiate programs are adept at helping to create these connections and bring all the parties together.

According to the survey, the average amount of glass collected through a bar, restaurant, hotel recycling program is about 150 tons/month, with the average number of participating businesses in a program at 100. Overall, implementing glass recycling resulted in a cost neutral for businesses or a small reduction/increase in costs.

Most programs were established to handle a high volume of glass containers generated at bars, restaurants, and hotels, as well as respond to the environmental impact of including glass with the trash rather than recycling it.

View the news release for more survey findings and best practices. And, get a detailed look at the survey in the October issue of Resource Recycling.

“This study illustrates very clearly that the U.S. scrap recycling industry is playing an important role in America’s economic recovery,” said ISRI President Robin Wiener. “All this adds up to recognition that the scrap recycling industry must be allowed to grow so it can continue to boost our economy, put people to work protect our environment and help save energy. When people think of recycling, they think of the bin at the curb when in fact our industry is a multi-billion-dollar ‘Made in America’ manufacturing success story.” More

The Heathman Lodge, a 192-room hotel in Vancouver, WA near the Columbia River Gorge and Mt. Hood National Forest, is on a sustainability mission, and that includes glass container recycling. For the past two years, glass bottles and jars are recycled at an onsite restaurant, all banquet services, and throughout the public areas.

Four yards of recycled mixed glass is collected for recycling each week. According to Scott Gix, The Heathman Lodge Sustainability Director, the biggest obstacle to glass recycling is that it takes a fair amount of space, but it has proven to make a big dent in diversion from the trash bin. In addition to glass, The Heathman Lodge recycles mixed paper, food composting, clean plastics, Compact Florescent bulbs, and batteries.

“We were actually the first business in Clark County to start a pilot program for businesses to recycle glass,” says Gix. The initial motivation was to reduce trash fees and expand overall hotel recycling, but in the beginning the lodge wasn’t able to find a local recycler to pick up the glass bottles, “so for the first few months of the program, we drove the glass bottles to a local recycling transfer station,” says Gix.

Since the fall of 2010, Hamilton County, which includes Cincinnati, Ohio, has offered assistance to bars and restaurants that want to recycle glass bottles and jars. The program is an offshoot of the County’s 2006 “Recycling At Work” program, which helps office buildings set up paper recycling programs. 
 
“We started getting more and more calls from bars and restaurants,” says Holly Christmann, Solid Waste Program Manager. “They wanted to recycle their glass and asked for our help. It was a natural progression to move to this sector to address cardboard and glass recycling.” 

 
 
Today, 34 bars and restaurants are participating, with a goal to reach 50 by end of summer. The County received an $8,000 grant from Ohio Department of Natural Resources. These funds were used to purchase 23 gallon interior recycling containers, which are provided free to bars and restaurants, as well as customer education resources.

Following a 2009 study showing Kansas City, MO was throwing 150 million pounds of recyclable glass in the landfill, local Boulevard Brewing helped to form glass recycling company Ripple Glass. Ripple constructed a state-of-the-art processing plant, and placed dedicated glass recycling containers throughout the metro area. They are now on track to provide a closed-loop beer bottle source with local glass bottle manufacturer Verallia.

After recycled glass is processed at Ripple, it’s sold to Verallia which makes an ECO Series beer bottle using an average of 29% recycled glass. Verallia expects to purchase 2,000 tons of recycled glass from Ripple in 2011, with more as glass recycling increases. Many of the bottles are then sold back to Boulevard Brewing. "It's a great way to close the loop, protect the environment, and even save money on the manufacturing of future glass beer bottles," says Jeff Krum, Boulevard CFO. "We are glad to be working alongside Verallia in this effort." More

Watch Ripple’s new ad

A new survey finds that 65% of restaurateurs have recycling programs, and another 19% of full service operators plan to start one in the next year. Most programs (74%) are “back of house.” The survey of 500 restaurant owners—full service and quick—and 1,100 consumers was conducted in March and April by the National Restaurant Association through an unrestricted research grant from Georgia-Pacific Professional. Download survey

While restaurateurs are recycling a variety of materials, 68% of full service restaurants and 52% of quick service recycle glass bottles. The median number of total hours spent per establishment by staff to maintain the recycling program, including employee training, in-house collection, and maintenance, is two hours/week.

According to the survey, 60% of consumers patronize restaurants with recycling programs and 51% are willing to pay a little more at a restaurant with a recycling program. And 28% of full service operators indicated that their recycling efforts have a positive impact on restaurant’s sales. Another 45% believe that customers are likely to prefer and be more loyal to restaurants with recycling programs. More

“There are two primary items that restaurants and food services have that don’t typically get recycled—glass bottles and food waste,” says Harry Cohen, owner of Blue Skies Recycling in St. Louis, MO. So Cohen has signed up the St. Louis Cardinals and over 30 local restaurants to help keep these valuable commodities from going to the landfill.

In addition to the partnership with Busch Stadium operations and the local restaurants, Blue Skies also has a contract for organics and glass recycling at Edward Jones Dome convention center. At this point about 10 of the full-service bars and restaurants are recycling glass bottles. “We’re just in the process of ramping up the glass recycling. Food was where we started, but when you combine these that’s about 70% of the waste at these operations,” says Cohen.

Recycle Across America (RAA) is promoting the use of national standardized recycling bin labels for public space recycling to help improve consumer confusion and to ensure that recyclable materials are not contaminated.

RAA’s focus is on recycling bins inside and outside office buildings, schools, churches, parks, and other areas where the public is asked to recycle. A pilot program at four school districts in the Minneapolis, MN area found that recycling increased 47% with more recycling bins and consistent labels.

RAA is using an online video to show the effect of label confusion at the bin and the resulting contamination. Inconsistent labels have shown to create consumer confusion and indifference. The resulting contamination then impacts the entire processing and economics of the recycling chain and jeopardizes, for example, the use of recycled glass to make new glass bottles.

“Our goal is to share this video and solution with converters and manufacturers that are burdened with these issues, so they can see the bigger picture of standardized labels in their industries,” says Mitch Hedlund, RAA Executive Director. As a next step, RAA its working to get an EPA grants to help schools begin using standardized recycling bin labels. They are also working with haulers and label suppliers. Watch the video

In January, after months of preparation, glass bottle recycling began at bars and restaurants in the Marion, OH (population 66,000) downtown area. The initiative was the brain child of Angela Carbetta (photo left), Director of Marion County Recycling and Litter Prevention. Seeing the amount of glass bottles that were going into trash, she decided to start a recycling program.

The program, called “Glass Act,” now collects about three tons/week of mixed glass bottles and jars for recycling from nearly 40 participating bars and restaurants. “And it’s clean,” says Carbetta. Recycled glass is going to Dlubak Glass and Rumpke’s Dayton Facility to be processed and sent to fiberglass manufacturers, as well as to container glass manufacturers for new glass bottles.

To get the program started Carbetta used a $10,000 Ohio Department of Natural Resources Division of Recycling & Litter Prevention grant plus a 50% match from Ohio Galvanizing. Most of the grant funds were used for indoor collection bins—primarily slim jims—and some outdoor containers, covering these costs for participants.

The program started with about 16 participants, and continues growing.  “Once a few started, others wanted to get on board,” says Carbetta. “It was like peer pressure.”  Participating bars and restaurants include everything from the Applebee's chain to local sports bars and smaller restaurants. “My goal is to have every bar in Marion doing this and I think we are getting close,” says Carbetta. They are also planning to expand to surrounding villages.

“Glass recycling increases each year thanks to the commitment of consumers everywhere.  Our industry is able to turn this waste into a valuable resource to make new bottles and jars because glass by nature is 100% recycleable,” says Niall Wall, FEVE President. Read the news release

Since 2000, the growth in single-stream recycling has steadily increased. In 2005, only 29% of the population with recycling had access to a single-stream program. By 2010, that number jumped to 64%. The study looked at single-stream programs that include glass bottles as well as those that do not. See the study chart for details

At the final three Pittsburgh Steelers home games of the 2010 regular season and a new year’s day winter classic hockey game, the Pennsylvania Resources Council (PRC) and its partners collected recyclables at tailgating parties outside Heinz Field.

The “Let’s Tackle Recycling” campaign collected glass containers, aluminum cans, and plastic bottles and cups, as well as cardboard, for recycling. This pilot initiative will continue at the January 15th Steelers playoff home game as well as any additional home playoff games. “Let’s Tackle Recycling” is sponsored by PRC and the Alcoa Foundation in partnership with Alco Parking, City of Pittsburgh Environmental Services, Greenstar, Pittsburgh Steelers, and the Sports & Exhibition Authority.

“We are very pleased with the participation from the fans,” says Dave Mazza, PRC regional director. They also collected a lot of recyclables. “Right now we’re at about 13,000 pounds of material collected,” says Mazza. “While glass is technically prohibited in the stadium,” says Mazza, “we knew there would be glass for recycling.” A composition study of recyclables collected found that 40% was aluminum cans, 30% glass bottles, 20% plastic bottles and cups, and 10% cardboard. The cardboard is mostly from beer cases. That translates into about 2,700 lbs. of glass or around 5,000 bottles.

eCullet has opened a new cullet, or recycled glass, processing facility in St. Paul, Minnesota, its third U.S. cullet processing facility. Other locations are in Oakland, California and Seattle, Washington.

The St. Paul facility will use state of the art technology to process cullet sourced from the greater Twin Cities area. eCullet’s St. Paul facility has the capability to remove ceramics, metals, paper, plastic, and other contaminants from the recycling stream and also color sort incoming recycled glass. eCullet is currently projecting an annual volume of over than 40,000 tons from St. Paul.

The gathering included tours of Seattle glass container manufacturing facility Verallia, the glass packaging division of Saint-Gobain, and the neighboring recycled glass processing facility of eCullet, Inc.. “We were honored to conduct tours of our eCullet Seattle facility. And, of course, appreciated the compliments on our technology and the quality of our cullet,” says Craig J. London, President and CEO of eCullet, Inc.

Over 100 recycling professionals attended the event, which was an extension of GPI’s Recycle Glass Week, an event sponsor. “To have over 100 industry professionals attending the conference was truly remarkable,” says London. “They were totally focused, vocal, and committed to glass recycling.”

Before the tours, four presenters outlined the latest technologies and the future of recycled glass. A panel discussion followed with a focus on how to improve and strength the glass recycling system in the Seattle region. ”We received a wealth of positive feedback from participants thanking the WSRA for putting on such an informative, useful, and enjoyable program,” says Conan O’Sullivan, Managing Director of WSRA.

For its part, the glass container industry, its companies, and thousands of employees set an ambitious goal in late 2008 of using at least 50% recycled glass in the manufacture of new glass bottles and jars by the end of 2013. In several states, glass manufacturing plants are already using 70% recycled glass, or cullet, to make new glass containers, showing that reaching the goal nationwide is possible and imminent. Read the editorial