Dive Brief:
- Colorado's Alpine Waste & Recycling has upgraded its Denver material recovery facility and partnered with Momentum Recycling to enhance glass diversion, as reported by Recycling Today.
- Alpine spent about $150,000 on two conveyors, a blower to separate debris from the glass and a bunker to store it. Momentum then collects up to 50 tons per day and transports them to its facility in the nearby city of Broomfield.
- Momentum can then optically sort the glass by color and recycle it to be used in nearby bottle manufacturing plants, fiberglass insulation or other products.
Dive Insight:
Momentum's glass recycling operation in Utah has successfully diverted millions of pounds of material, much of it to a fiberglass company within the state, since it opened in 2008. This new Colorado facility was estimated to cost about $11 million and will save on transportation costs by sending much of the material to the local bottle plants.
The partnership is a good fit for Alpine too, as the company recently invested about $5 million to upgrade the efficiency of its MRF and now has the capability to accept polystyrene foam. These investments will also help preserve local landfill capacity which isn't an imminent issue but is something that has started to become a priority in other parts of Colorado.
Glass is still seen as challenging to collect and not worth the effort to some municipalities, but manufacturers have been trying to change that perception since they have a need for the material. As shown by Momentum, as well as companies such as Ripple Glass in Missouri, recycling glass can work when local markets exist to take it.
