Baltimore County residents' have had their perceptions about where their glass ends up shattered.
Over the weekend, news broke that the county-which does not include the City of Baltimore-has not been recycling the glass it's been collecting as part of its recycling program.
For the past seven years, the jars and bottles that residents dutifully placed in their blue bins have been being junked instead. "There are numerous issues with glass recycling, including increased presence of shredded paper in recycling streams which contaminates materials and is difficult to separate from broken glass fragments, in addition to other limitations on providing quality material," county spokesperson Sean Naron told The Baltimore Sun.
Glass recycling reportedly stopped in 2013, the same year the county opened a $23 million single-stream recycling facility, according to the Sun article.
Baltimore County had adopted single-streaming for all homes by October 2010, part of a growing trend among municipalities trying to boost recycling rates.
Chemical & Engineering News notes that only 40 percent of glass collected by single-stream recycling services ends up being recycled into new products, compared to 90 percent of glass in multi-stream collection systems.
The same article notes that the cost of transporting heavy glass from recycling centers to glass manufacturers is often prohibitively high, meaning it's often more economical to just make glass out of new materials.
https://reason.com/2020/02/03/baltimore-county-admits-it-hasnt-been-recycling-glass-for-7-years-it-still-encourages-residents-to-recycle-glass/
Over the weekend, news broke that the county-which does not include the City of Baltimore-has not been recycling the glass it's been collecting as part of its recycling program.
For the past seven years, the jars and bottles that residents dutifully placed in their blue bins have been being junked instead. "There are numerous issues with glass recycling, including increased presence of shredded paper in recycling streams which contaminates materials and is difficult to separate from broken glass fragments, in addition to other limitations on providing quality material," county spokesperson Sean Naron told The Baltimore Sun.
Glass recycling reportedly stopped in 2013, the same year the county opened a $23 million single-stream recycling facility, according to the Sun article.
Baltimore County had adopted single-streaming for all homes by October 2010, part of a growing trend among municipalities trying to boost recycling rates.
Chemical & Engineering News notes that only 40 percent of glass collected by single-stream recycling services ends up being recycled into new products, compared to 90 percent of glass in multi-stream collection systems.
The same article notes that the cost of transporting heavy glass from recycling centers to glass manufacturers is often prohibitively high, meaning it's often more economical to just make glass out of new materials.
https://reason.com/2020/02/03/baltimore-county-admits-it-hasnt-been-recycling-glass-for-7-years-it-still-encourages-residents-to-recycle-glass/
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