Recycling Home

Upper Arkansas Recycling: Glass Recycling Facts

~Your community recycling program~

All glass collected by Upper Arkansas Recycling is brought to our glass recycling site in Cañon City.  It is placed into two holding bins.  One is for BROWN glass only.  The other bin is for CLEAR and OTHER COLORS of glass. 

 

      

                                                            CLEAR/GREEN HOLDING BIN                                      BOTH GLASS HOLDING BINS                                      BROWN GLASS HOLDING BIN

 

If green glass has been placed in the brown glass bins at any site, the glass must be sorted.  The green glass is placed in the clear glass holding bin.  Contaminates, such as plastic, trash, aluminum, and glass other than glass BOTTLES, are removed.  The glass is then ready to ship out.  When we have collected about 120 tons of each type of glass in the holding bins, we then ship the glass to Wheat Ridge, where it is melted down and made into new bottles.  For more information on this process, please contact Beth with UAR, at bethlenz@uaacog.com or 719.275.1675.

                                                                                                    

 

GLASS RECYCLING FACTS:

Not only is glass easy to recycle, but it can be recycled indefinitely. That glass container you used this morning could have glass in it that was manufactured during the Gold Rush.  

  • Upper Arkansas Recycling Program ONLY ACCEPTS GLASS BOTTLES.  Dishes, mirrors, light bulbs, window/auto glass, and drinking glass are NOT accepted.  These items will contaminate the glass holding bins.

  • Please rinse and remove the lids from the glass bottles that you recycle. 

  • Although glass production declined in the early 1980s (as the result of competition from plastic and aluminum containers), it is now increasing.

  • By recycling glass containers, you can help reduce energy used for manufacturing glass containers by up to 30%, reduce air pollution (recycled glass production produces less sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide) and help preserve valuable landfill space. You also reduce the amount of mining waste created.

  • A glass container takes a million years to even begin to decompose, the fact is glass can be recycled an infinite amount of times. 

  • 9% of household waste is glass.  

  • The average glass bottle contains 20 - 30% recycled content. 

  • You do not need to remove the paper labels (these burn off in the glass furnace). About 80% of glass containers remain intact during the collection and sorting process. 

  • For every ton of glass recycled it will save over a ton of raw materials from being used, including 1,300 pounds of sand, 433 pounds of soda ash, 433 pounds of limestone, and 151 pound of feldspar.

  • One ton of recycled glass saves the equivalent to 10 gallons of oil in energy.

Glass can, in two ways, literally live forever.  If not recycled, a glass container will spend a million years in a landfill before it will even begin to decompose. If the glass is recycled, it can be recycled an infinite amount of times over that million years. Once glass containers are collected for recycling, they are cleaned and sorted by color. They are then crushed (the crushed glass is called cullet).  The cullet is then re-melted with raw material and then formed into new glass products.  A video of this process is available to watch.  Please contact Beth with UAR @ bethlenz@uaacog.com or 719.275.1675, #119.

Hit Counter

                                                                                                                       © 2000-2006 Upper Arkansas Area Council of Governments.
                                                                                                                                                           All Rights Reserved.