glass and the recycle center

[Eric Baker]

Hi fellow artists,

I'm trying to do a late spring clean, and I've got many pounds of scrap glass left over from experimentation that aren't really re-usable, and I need them out of the way. My local recycle center accepts 'clear' glass (usually clear bottles, etc.) and 'colored' glass (i.e. brown and blue bottles) in their large dumpsters.

Can i throw my Bullseye glass scraps into the colored glass dumpsters without contaminating the whole recyclability of the glass in that dumpster?

I live in a rural area, and throwing them in my trash can isn't practical, since it would be many trash cans and my rural trash hauler won't allow it anyway, but i certainly don't want to make a whole dumpster of glass unusable just because of my scrap. I know that the COE's will be different, but I don't really understand the chemistry of glass and all the fluxes, oxides, etc., used in its manufacture. I'm amazed that millions of bottles from different makes and colors can be thrown together into a dumpster and that can be usable to the glass industry!?

Wouldn't Bullseye mixed in with bottle glass be a recipe for disaster for the recycler? Or do they have a flux, etc. that can make the whole mix workable?


Thanks for any insights you can offer. I'm drowning in too much scrap and too little space... ;o)


Eric

[charlie]

ask them.

a lot of crushed glass gets powdered, and either sent back into the glass furnace, or included in things like road asphalt. in either case, the coe doesn't matter.

[Bert Weiss]

My local dump, in Maine, has permission to bury glass. They found it didn't pay to actually recycle it. My glass is 10mm float which doesn't play nice with their crusher. So, they let me stick it directly in the hole, at no charge to me.

So I would ask what they suggest you do.