December 01, 2020recycling

The Ripple Effect of Glass Recycling in the Midwest

By Sarah Luebe, Ripple Glass

Before 2009, Kansas City had virtually no glass recycling. Recycling glass is important because it is 100% recyclable. It can be recycled endlessly, unlike a lot of other recycled materials. Using recycled glass in manufacturing can reduce CO2 and help reduce energy costs. So why wasn’t glass being recycled in Kansas City?

Glass recycling has never taken hold in Kansas City because, despite strong local demand for processed recycled glass, no processing facility existed. And in a real-life chicken and egg dilemma, no one could justify the substantial investment required to establish such a facility because there was no systematic or widespread collection of recycled glass.

Fast forward to 2009 when the people behind Boulevard Brewing Company wanted to find a way to reduce the amount of glass waste in Kansas City. Each year, some 10 million empty Boulevard beer bottles find their way into the local waste stream and 160 million pounds of glass containers end up in metro-area landfills.

Recycled glass is used to make fiberglass insulation, and the nation’s biggest fiberglass producer, Owens Corning, has a large plant right here in Kansas City. In addition, Boulevard’s bottle manufacturer was located just a few hours away in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and had a need for recycled glass. So, Ripple Glass was founded as Kansas City’s first truly local glass recycling company.

 

Man standing holding two bins of recyled glass on his shoulders standing in front of a Ripple Recycling bin.

 

Ripple Glass built a state-of-the-art glass processing facility and set out over 60 glass-only drop-off bins around the Kansas City metro to collect glass. The Kansas City metro was not the only city that needed glass recycling, so Ripple Glass also started collecting glass from communities around the Midwest.

 

graphic of Ripple Glass logo across the map of the Midwest states they serve: Illinois, Kentucky, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas and Oklahoma

 

Today, Ripple Glass has over 100 glass-only drop-off bins to collect glass from the Kansas City metro. The regional network has expanded to over 100 communities across nine states, Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska, Arkansas, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Illinois, and Kentucky. In addition, in 2018, Ripple Glass started commercial collection to recycle glass from bars, restaurants, and businesses in Kansas City.

 

Ripple Glass recycling bin at Aldi's parking lot

 

All of the glass is brought to Ripple's processing facility where the glass is cleaned up, sorted by color, and crushed to our end-user’s specifications. The brown glass is separated and is sent to a bottle manufacturer who uses the glass to make new beer bottles – like Boulevard Brewing Company’s! And the other colors of glass are crushed into a furnace-ready cullet and sent over the state-line to Owens Corning where it’s melted and spun into fiberglass insulation. Since 2009, residents and communities around the Midwest have helped keep over 200,000 TONS of glass out of the landfill!

 

crushed glass on the factory line on the way to be recycled

 

You can learn more about Ripple Glass and get a behind the scenes look at Ripple Glass' processing facility at https://www.rippleglass.com/virtual-tour.

Interested in starting a glass recycling collection program in your city? Please reach out to Josh Boyer at Josh@rippleglass.com.

 

 

 

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