How do we recycle glass?

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Have you ever wondered what happens to your glass after you place it in your curbside bin? Take a behind-the-scenes tour of one of SMI's most comprehensive glass recycling facilities in the U.S., located in Delavan, Wisconsin. A variety of glass is accepted, processed, screened and color sorted to make furnace-ready, recycled glass called cullet. Cullet is used to make new glass bottles or fiberglass insulation, supporting a true circular economy.
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Опубликовано:

22 дек 2021

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Комментарии : 121

@seanpeters3690 Год назад

Glass never decomposes and will effectively be in the landfill forever. I'm glad that there is a glass recycling program here, and I hope more places start recycling glass better. Each bit helps.

@haverjr Год назад

I mean while it doesn't decompose it does break down with pressure like any other matter to basically be powderized, and unlike microplasics which leech into groundwater pulverized glass is just another substrate water can pass through with no ill effects like sand, fine stone, etc. In that way it is far better for the environment than plastics as it does not hurt our food chain or oceans with floating debris.

@jonhunt5408 11 месяцев назад

@@haverjrprecisely, while glass does take up landfill space, it’s essentially refined rock, and like any other aggregate poses no environmental threat.

@apocalypsepow 10 месяцев назад

Yes but glass occurs naturally so it's not as bad as plastic it basically just becomes sand again

@shaunp9592 8 месяцев назад

Glass does "decompose". It just breaks down into finer and finer particles. If not contaminated by what was in it to begin with glass itself is NOT harmful to the environment. There are no toxic elements or chemicals in glass.

@picoj44 7 месяцев назад

Considering glass and other silicates make up a large percentage of rocks and the natural world I’m not sure this is really cause for alarm 😂

@whez08 Год назад

The most amazing part for me is that these billions and billions of small glass particles get actually sorted one by one. The amount of work the scanner does is mind blowing. (I think in the past it was way easier to sort the unbroken bottles by color and break them down afterwards. But now there are machines who sort the actual broken pieces instead.)

@darkpadden Год назад

Sure most glass that people think about is clean but.. There is a type a class that is flooding the market atm is leaded glass. Where does this come from? Old school TV sets. And as far as i am aware of there are only 3 places in the US that takes it in and all 3 are overloaded. It's a 500 year problem most forget.

@whez08 Год назад

@@darkpadden Isn't the lead separated in the process of remelting the glass into new product because of their different melting temperature?

@darkpadden Год назад

@@whez08 it takes more then just Temps but also extra chems to do it efficiently plus one of the side effects of the process is the production of cyanide and other toxic gasses that have to be filtered from my understanding. I once looked into what it would take to build a plant to do it small scale the 200k investment didn't scare me but the epa and general health considerations did.

@xy4489 11 месяцев назад

Yeah.. would never have guessed that this is the more efficient design rather than keeping the bottles whole for as long as possible.

@BillyJoeBob-tv6co 2 месяца назад

super toxic if aspirated / ingested / in eyes etc

@natasha.ixtlan 2 года назад

Great job guys! 💯

@TrishaPrajnawirani 2 года назад

Wow, this is so interesting! It's still very difficult to find these recycling plants in my country. We don't even have a designated area for throwing away glass or batteries. I'm hoping that they will be more widely available in the future.

@1091Floyd21 4 месяца назад

Is that the U.S?

@TrishaPrajnawirani 4 месяца назад

@@1091Floyd21 I'm from Indonesia. I think the US probably has a decent amount of places for recycling and more proper waste handling, though I may be wrong.

@xy4489 11 месяцев назад

Glass > Plastic. When people say "recycling is a scam" they really mean "plastic recycling is a scam".

@robertchristian821 2 года назад

Awesome!

@originalrecipe7988 2 года назад

People don't understand, we need to take care of this planet. There's a lot of talk about it but no one does anything. We only have 1 home and it's the one being destroyed by us. Colonizing other planets won't be for sometime, so where are we supposed to go when the Earth finally has had enough and forces us to look for home #2. Besides, imagine colonizing Mars and being able to have 2 life-supporting planets, instead of having to say, "Oh we can't go back to Earth because we destroyed it to the point that it can't sustain humans anymore."

@BillyJoeBob-tv6co 2 месяца назад

no sweat, God is going to smelter the entire planet's surface, perhaps to a few miles deep, in the super-near future

@dianetapper2900 2 года назад

Wow! How interesting!

@zoezen6898 Год назад

Love ❤️ it xxx

@stevegiannotti2338 Год назад

Interesting video.

@LORDRA1DEN 10 месяцев назад

Cool,. Thanks!

@colinpovey7923 7 месяцев назад

Thanks you.

@shahspandini4352 Год назад

From where do you receive these glass bottles etc ? Is the collection process carried out by your plant or you just buy it from vendors?

@cyxx414 2 года назад

this is so interesting

@vysovath9760 2 года назад

😍😍😍😍

@jeepy8067 Год назад

Why don't manufacturers take back their own bottles like milk bottles used to go back to the milkman, and just reuse the same bottle rather than smashing it all up and then having to remanufacture it? I get it's more effort but how much less energy would it use?

@smi1896 Год назад

Refillable programs are great! Sometimes they are designed like a deposit system for consumers to bring them back for sterilizing and refill. Unfortunately, this is not the mainstay today, but we are supportive of this too!

@zoezen6898 Год назад

Do any big companies who use glass for packaging offer some form of compensation to customers dropping used containers from them back to them?

@tonyHern865 10 месяцев назад

why do we still use plastic bottles if glass is that convinient?

@RaffaeleGambardella-sv9wr 3 месяца назад

👌

@danielgodfrey4415 Год назад

Looks exactly like an almond processing plant

@jukee67 Год назад

They probably feed it to us in all kinds of ways.

@user-gf8es5ct8g 4 месяца назад

good❤

@martinkwesiga9904 7 месяцев назад

Thank you so much…any solution to ampoules and vials (medical glass waste)

@davidb2206 7 месяцев назад

We need several of these plants in every state ASAP. Coke and Pepsi should be made use only glass bottles that are returnable (and reusable) like in the 1970's. The age of making local taxpayers pay for Coca Cola's plastic trash (at their local landfill) is over. Support a "Bottle Bill" in your state.

@iqoverlord 7 месяцев назад

When Inwas a kid. My grandfather bought his beer by the case at the local brewery. He would stick the empty bottles back in the case and return them for a discount on the next one. The brewery just sent the bottles back through the filling line after they went through washing and sanitizer machine. Recycling is not new. Our grandparents and great grandparents did it long before. The problem is society changed now everything is disposable for companies to save money or in most cases to make extra money..😊😊

@Love4ourFamily 17 дней назад

How do they sort the colors? Do people manually sort it or is there a machine with lenses that recognizes the colors?

@user-ui4om2um2r 4 месяца назад

I am about to use glass sand to replace natural sand in concrete for my scholarship experiment，I want to know if I could use small crushing machine to crush waste glass into glass sand？Thanks.

@nicl6012 Год назад

Informative Video! 👍🏼 But what about labels? Are they being washed off or will they be burned during the glass melting step?

@smi1896 Год назад

Labels are removed when we break the glass. They are then screened off or blown off through the process.

@1091Floyd21 4 месяца назад

@@smi1896 I can't visualise that properly. Say if I wanted to get a label off a bottle myself, I'd use really hot water with some sort of wire wool, and give it it a really hard scrub, and then go back over the places where it didn't come off. How could all that be done on pieces of glass that are broken? I can't picture glue would just come off by being air blown!

@jamessantiago9724 2 месяца назад

Our Landfill wants to partner with our recycling facility in Alaska. Our challenge is shipping it to a plant after it is crushed. I wish there was a market here maybe to use as filler in our roads

@scottsendra491 Год назад

Is it better to leave a ferrous metal cap screwed onto a glass bottle or remove it when placed in recycling bin? I was concerned with it screwed on that glass would get stuck inside the cap screw threads.

@smi1896 Год назад

Either is OK. Leaving it on, it'll be recovered at the MRF or our facility. Removing it, it could be potentially lost in transit or recovered at our facility♻

@executivesteps 8 месяцев назад

The air must be full of glass dust. Doesn’t seem healthy to work around there without the appropriate masks???

@amalneeanurasiri8180 11 месяцев назад

Please answer my question, how do you sort glass into three different colors? Do you use people to sort them or do you sort of them some sensory machines which can identify the colour and sort them ?

@dougaltolan3017 7 месяцев назад

It's automatic. The glass is dropped across a line of camera sensors that control air jets. That was the optical sorting stage he mentioned.

@hape3862 3 месяца назад

If only we could put three recycling containers for white, green and brown glass at every street intersection so that people could sort the still-whole bottles by color for us! - Oh, wait, Germany does that?

@oduonyecallistus3680 2 года назад

Wow! This is the most interesting video I have seen in this year. I have millions of auto glasses wasting away here due to lack of recycling facilities here in my country. Is there any chance that I can send them to you ?

@happity 2 года назад

Not practical, but you can still hammer them into sand

@Fan-lq6uv 7 месяцев назад

I've wondered about one thing. Clear, green, and brown/amber glass are common and easily sorted for recycling back into similar colored. But what about other color? I've seen red, blue, orange, and milk (white) glass. Do you offer mixed unsorted color for use where color don't matter, such as making glass bead for paint cans?

@smi1896 7 месяцев назад

We accept all colors for recycling without issue! ♻

@1091Floyd21 4 месяца назад

@@smi1896 How? Does blue and red glass go for fiberglass?

@mangalapurbhe7972 2 месяца назад

But i have no appropriate platform to sale it can you plz tell me about it sir

@jellyboy123 Год назад

would it be better for recycling if all glass was clear and they don’t use green or amber brown glass? plus don’t use labels it be more easy for recycling process .

@smi1896 Год назад

Not necessarily. Colors and labels are the least of the challenges with glass recycling in North America. Contamination in single-stream collection due to needed MRF investments would be a better focus!

@deanobeany Год назад

Some products need coloured glass, lots of foods, chemicals or medicines need darker glass to protect them from light so they don't degrade.

@mklnmlkn6466 Год назад

سلام پودر شیشه برای چه کاری استفاده میشه

@user-hb2vs4ou9r 3 месяца назад

Hello, I am sending you a message from Iran. America's technology regarding glass recycling is very high. In which state is your factory located?

@geoffgeoff143 7 месяцев назад

Here, glass containers are crushed to sand and used in trenches instead of natural sand.

@1091Floyd21 4 месяца назад

I wish they explained how they remove the metal, rather than just saying we remove it. I would've liked if they explained what air classification is

@TheKirilover 7 месяцев назад

I’m amazed to hear it’s possible to separate green/brown/white glass automatically on an industrial scale. Meanwhile in Europe we will put this task on customer, to throw glass in containers according to the colors. It would be so much easier to have one container for all and an idnautrial separator, like in this video.

@1091Floyd21 4 месяца назад

Yeah, but it probably ends up costing more that way. Did you ever think about that? The U.S knows it's citizens are too stupid/lazy to be bothered throwing the right coloured glass in the right place, so they rely on the factories to do that.

@Chris.Davies 11 месяцев назад

The sad thing about recycling glass is that it is very energy intensive to re-use as glass vessels. Now, in the USA, your energy is mostly non-renewable, so the carbon emitted as a result of the recycling is woefully high. :(

@Ashleekaa 10 месяцев назад

Good point. I was wondering why glass bottles were being made when it was already glass bottles, can't we just clean them and reuse them?

@ELXatrix 9 месяцев назад

@@Ashleekaa for standart bottles that works already in some places but for lots of bottles with different designs thats not worth the time to sort and ship them back...have a look at how many different bottle designs there are for wine and liquor...you want to send every empty wine bottle back to the winery it came from? or is it more convenient for you to just toss it in a container wich gets to some plant like that?

@Ashleekaa 9 месяцев назад

@@ELXatrix A nice design isn't really important so everyone could have the same design. The environment is more important than aesthetics.

@ELXatrix 9 месяцев назад

@@Ashleekaa well good luck getting the companys to agree one one design and not stand out in the shelf. and same with the consumer then picking some standart design bottle and not the fancy looking one.

@Ashleekaa 9 месяцев назад

@@ELXatrix Ah well that sounds hard, I suppose we'll just have to continue being selfish idiots who get taken out by AI. What a way to become extinct.

@dellakelly472 2 года назад

How are you able to sort the class by color? Is there a machine that does this?

@smi1896 2 года назад

Yes! We use optical sorters to sort by color.

@metsimotsatsing4455 Год назад

@Strategic Materials Hello 👋 and which machine is used to weight the cullet?

@davidochuonyo391 Год назад

How much would this system cost

@mangalapurbhe7972 2 месяца назад

I am also doing Glass business

@kotlamallesh9993 Год назад

Wich is company

@CarlosAlberto-ii1li 9 месяцев назад

Almost 50 years ago l had 10 trucks bringing in glass 6 days a week, the price l got at that time in UK was 50 pounds, as soon as all the 'expensive' recycling programs started l need to sell up and put all workers in the street, recycling is expensive, same with paper.

@Mohemd-zr4ly 5 месяцев назад

I have an amount of glass nuts, about two thousand tons

@eamaralmaseyha3328 2 года назад

I have glass scrap

@sanjaytravel837 Год назад

I want to start scrap glass work I want to sell that scrap, you tell whom to sell this scrap

@scotanderson7689 8 месяцев назад

Why don't we go back and replace 1 time use plastic with glass containers like we use to. They would not even to sort the glass if they used it in road and other fill projects.

@davidhouston5783 7 месяцев назад

Lots of beer bottles with buts and lime pieces in them that don't get returned.

@fayethornton774 Год назад

How get started to collect and sell glass to yall?

@fayethornton774 Год назад

Live in Alabama nothing like that here

@ghosted9108 10 месяцев назад

0:41 anyone else notice the dice😂

@scottrayhons2537 7 месяцев назад

Why break the glass bottle to start with. Why not do what we did in the 1960's and return the bottle to be refilled.

@RoadlampManufacturer 7 месяцев назад

well

@ClwnJuNkY 7 месяцев назад

How much money is there is glass

@h7opolo Год назад

0:45 wrong, they don't sell cullet. cullet is finer grain.

@smi1896 Год назад

Cullet is exactly what we sell! 1/4"

@Pondppnaravit2 9 месяцев назад

Imagine falling off on those.

@user-ic8le7xy9m 11 месяцев назад

السلام عليكم انا من مصر انا اعمل في جمع مواد الخرده والازاز القديم واتمنا ان اصدر خارجآ انا شاب فقير ولاكن عندي المكان والخبره

@sniper7.62x51 2 года назад

What happens to the 50% of the stuff that is not glass?

@smi1896 2 года назад

We recycle what we can that is non-glass like ferrous and non-ferrous metals or cardboard. We receive many items that are non-recyclable and are forced to take the scenic route to the landfill. This is why contamination in single-stream recycling is challenging!

@sanjaytravel837 Год назад

@@smi1896 I want to start scrap glass work I want to sell that scrap, you tell whom to sell this scrap

@kristoferraypolman4066 Год назад

Ehh I'm not concerned what happens to an empty bottle. My bottle is a gift to one million years down the road

@evilelf5967 7 месяцев назад

bet they get through a lot of band aids.lol.

@jukee67 Год назад

But they say you can't recycle broken glass

@geoffgeoff143 7 месяцев назад

Glass will eventually devitrify. Glass is a discription, not a specific product.

@bellytripper-nh8ox 5 месяцев назад

**divitrify** is **NOT** a word

@DJBSharpMusic 2 года назад

These people literally specialize in selling people's trash back to them. 🤣 Pretty neat stuff, jokes aside

@geoffgeoff143 7 месяцев назад

Who pays for this reclaiming?

@brianbassett4379 6 месяцев назад

Infinitely recyclable, with a turnaround of potentially 3 days. So why isn't it mandatory to recycle glass? The "waste management" company that collects my garbage doesn't recycle glass; they just transport it to a landfill... why is that allowed? They demand customers cherry-pick and sort recyclables that can be easily profitable but don't recycle glass because it's too expensive for them to process.