After eight years, the City of Savannah is once again facilitating glass recycling.
In the years since 2015, when the city's sanitation department discontinued glass recycling, a few private glass recyclers provided services. On Wednesday, the city will launch a new program with hopes of encouraging widespread adoption by the Savannah community.
At a press conference Tuesday in Bacon Park, city leaders formalized a partnership with GlassWRX, a glass recycling company based out of South Carolina. The initial contract, approved by council in July 2022, is for $104,448.
The new glass recycling program won't be curbside service. GlassWRX will place two drop-off bins for glass: one at the Bacon Park Transfer Station at 6400 Skidaway Rd.; and one at the Dean Forest Road landfill at 1327 Dean Forest Rd. More locations will be announced in February, according to a city press release.
Glass will be the only recyclable accepted at these locations, and the scheduled recycling pickups for paper and plastic remain in place.
Why was glass recycling discontinued in the first place?
When the City of Savannah began its recycling program in 2009, it included Savannah's paper, plastics, metals and glass. Five years later, the program stopped recycling glass.
Pratt Industries, the city’s recycling contractor, was still accepting glass at the time, but it was going to a landfill. At that point, the glass recycling industry as a whole was hurting — it was cheaper to landfill the material than to transport it.
Pratt has been landfilling the glass from Savannah since August 2015 and did so at times prior to that, depending on the market. Glass is heavy, and there aren't nearby industries that use it in their processes.
On the whole, glass is a tricky material to recycle. It contaminates other recyclables when collected together, and the industrial uses for the recycled material have dwindled since the 2010s. Most soda companies and home goods companies have shifted to plastic bottles, since those are more easily recycled.
GlassWRX uses recycled glass to make Engineered Cellular Magmatics, or ECM, a porous stone-like substance with several applications. Their focus is mostly on infrastructure solutions. According to GlassWRX’s website, the base material can be used for water and air filtration, stormwater remediation, beach restoration, building artificial reefs, even as a base material for lightweight concrete.
At his weekly press conference on Tuesday, Savannah Mayor Van Johnson said the whole purpose of the new contract with GlassWRX is to keep glass out of landfills. He expects the company to keep its word.
"I think that we'll have audit opportunities to make sure that they're doing what they say they're going to do. But if the vast majority of it doesn't end up in a landfill, I think it's a win," Johnson said.
