by Thom Zaremba, shareholder at Roetzel & Andress
In my last blog, I asked, “Is recycling glass really that important? Can’t we continue to recycle the many plastic products that have replaced the use of glass in so many different applications?”
To answer that, we need to take a quick look at the explosive growth of plastics and assess how successful plastic recycling has been compared to glass recycling.
To get the ball rolling, I’ll ask this question: “What do nerve cells and plastics have in common?” The answer is that they represent two of the biggest scientific about-faces in history. For centuries, science believed that the regeneration of damaged nerve cells was impossible. However, we now know that even neurons found in the most sensitive parts of the central nervous system can regenerate under the right conditions.
Plastic shares a similar scientific about-face.
Plastic finds its origin in a contest intended to provide an environmentally sustainable alternative to killing elephants for their ivory. In 1864, Scientific American published that a manufacturer of billiard balls was offering a $10,000 prize to anyone who could provide them with a material to replace ivory from elephant tusks in making pool balls. John Wesley Hyatt invented cellulose as an alternative. His discovery is now known as the founding of the modern plastics industry. However, as we’ll soon see, rather than becoming a champion of sustainability, plastics have become a source of pollution and contamination worldwide.
We know that America recycles little end-of-life architectural glass back into glass, and only about 6% is downcycled, that is, re-manufactured into products requiring less purity than required for recycling back into glass. When all is said and done, we send about 10 million metric tons of architectural glass to landfills every year. Not the best recycling record.
What about plastic? It has replaced glass and many, if not most, materials once used to make or package household products, eyeglasses, car parts, truck parts, furniture and almost anything you can imagine! Plastic production has increased by about 9% every year since 1950. In 2023, production hit 414 million tons. But each year, an estimated 52 million metric tons of plastic is dumped in landfills or burned, about five times more than glass.
What happens to all that plastic? Unlike glass, which remains environmentally stable in or out of landfills, plastic does not remain ecologically stable. Over time, sunlight, especially ultraviolet-B radiation, makes plastic brittle. Then the physical stresses of weather take over and break it into ever smaller pieces until–viola–most plastic waste ends up as micro- or nanoplastics drifting throughout the environment worldwide.
Microplastics are now found at every level of our food chain. Because they are hydrophobic (oil-like), as opposed to hydrophilic (sand-like), they can easily enter cells of living organisms. Micro- and nanoplastics have been found in the snow at the top of Alaska’s Mount Denali and in nearly every organ of the human body, including our brains. All this makes it easy to answer our original question—waiting for the plastics to be recycled won’t solve our glass recycling problem.
Is there a solution to the pollution caused by dumping instead of recycling our end-of-life architectural glass? There doesn’t seem to be any simple solution, but there are steps that we can take. After all, as Lao Tzu teaches, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
One step that could (perhaps should) be taken is to finally develop a recycling symbol or mark for architectural glass products. A universal recycling symbol already exists–the möbius loop–three chasing arrows in a triangle, which symbolizes collection, processing and reuse in a continuous cycle.
Do other industries have recycling symbols or marks associated with their products? Yes.
The paper industry has three recycling symbols, one each for paper, cardboard (corrugated fiberboard) and paperboard (non-corrugated fiberboard). The metal industry has recycling symbols for steel and aluminum. The organics industry has recycling symbols for wood, cork, cotton and jute. The composite industries have recycling symbols for paper composites with cardboard, plastic or aluminum; biodegradable plastics; and plastic/aluminum composites.
But what about glass? It has only three, and none of them apply to architectural glass. The glass symbols are for clear (glass jars), green (wine bottles) and brown glass (beer bottles).
The development of recycling symbols for architectural glass must be viewed only as a first step, not a solution. After all, the plastics industry has a fully developed system of 21 different recycling symbols or marks. Obviously, that hasn’t solved the problem of plastic recycling.
What’s on tap for my next blog? Stay tuned because that’s all I know for now!