Company Turns Glass Into Sand and Rebuild Coastline

College Students Found Company to Turn Glass Into Sand and Rebuild Coastline

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Recycle, recycle, recycle—this imperative has been drilled into the head of the public for years. However, problems with the recycling system itself can defeat even the best intentions. For example, New Orleans, Louisiana, does not recycle glass through its normal processes. Even one glass bottle can send an entire recycling bin to a landfill. Two students at Tulane University—Franziska Trautmann and Max Steitz—set out to solve this problem of wasted glass. Creating a company called Glass Half Full, they have since recycled over 2 million pounds of glass while also helping repair the eroding Louisiana coastline.

From a conversation over a bottle of wine to a warehouse in New Orleans, the young founders' company has grown exponentially over only a couple of years. The company accepts drop-off donations of glass, which is then ground down into varying levels of fineness. Some is transformed into cullet or gravel. These rougher materials are used in restoration projects, eco-construction, and to create new glass. Other glass is turned into sand—the material that glass has been made from for millennia.

The fine sand has a special use. It is critical to rebuilding Louisiana's swiftly eroding coastline. Since the 1930s, over a quarter of the state's wetlands have eroded. The land cannot naturally be replenished fast enough. Adding human-made sand can help reclaim this space and protect existing environments. Burlap sand bags are critical to this mission as well as disaster relief. The burlap is biodegradable, eventually leaving only the new sediment behind. Since dwindling natural sand reserves are expensive and environmentally unfriendly to excavate, a man-made solution which recycles while producing a usable product is an environmental godsend. The company hopes it will both restore the local ecosystems while also providing jobs, truly a glass half full approach to environmentalism.