It started with lamenting the destiny of empty beer and liquor bottles.
In early 2020, Franziska Trautmann and Max Steitz, then seniors at Tulane College, had been spitting out methods to maintain their glasses out of the trash. For all its acquisitions, New Orleans didn’t supply curbside glass recycling. Within the Crescent Metropolis, many bottles of sewage find yourself in landfills.
For Ms. Trautman and Mr. Steitz, this was not simply intelligent, however a missed alternative. The town’s wetlands had been eroding quickly, and glass might kind within the sand. What in the event that they collected glass from across the metropolis, crushed it into sand and put it to good use?
Inspired by the hopeful and enthusiastic crowd of younger folks, they bought a small glass pulverizer and positioned it within the courtyard of Zeta Psi, a pleasant native fraternity. Nearly instantly, their drop-off barrels overflowed. “We did not anticipate how a lot demand there was,” mentioned Mr Steitz, 27.
Now, 4 years later, his firm, Glass Half Full, is the one glass recycling facility in New Orleans. It has change into the founders’ full-time job, using a workers of 15 and increasing far past their creativeness.
Up to now, their operation has crushed seven million kilos of glass that has been utilized in disaster-relief sandbags, terrazzo flooring, landscaping, wetland restoration and analysis. They provide curbside pickup in New Orleans and Baton Rouge and not too long ago opened a small facility in Birmingham, Ala. The corporate is about to maneuver to a brand new three-acre website in St. Bernard Parish after elevating $4.5 million to construct and equip the brand new facility. The place, which they may hire.
Glass Half Full had $1 million in income final 12 months, in line with Ms. Trotman, 26, who mentioned the enterprise can be breaking even.
Profitability in glass recycling relies on the standard, proximity of the recycling facility and the way the glass containers are collected. Paper, plastic and different recyclable glass change into contaminated and tough to type, decreasing its worth, mentioned Scott DeFife, president of the Glass Packaging Institute, a commerce affiliation. So whereas glass will be endlessly recycled, it typically is not.
“The folks of Glass Half Full are doing yeoman’s work right here,” Mr DeFife mentioned. However, he added, the rationale they existed was indicative of the “damaged system of waste administration on this nation”.
In some ways, Glass Half Full is testing whether or not it may well resolve a mismatch.
A 3rd of the glass thrown out in the US is recycled, whereas Recycling rates in New Orleans are the bottom within the nation. On the identical time, sand, which is essential for building, is in growing demand worldwide. The United Nations has warned of its lack. However mining sand is usually environmentally damaging and its weight makes it costly to move.
In Louisiana, the place wetlands are disappearing at a mean price of a soccer discipline each 100 minutes, the state wants hundreds of thousands of cubic meters of fabric to rebuild its coast. But dredging and damming of the higher Mississippi River retains sediment Otherwise can be used for wetland restoration Too costly to ship to distant states.
Glass Half Full’s operations are nonetheless small, and its coastal restoration work continues to be within the exploratory part. However its founders say digging up the bottles in New Orleans and utilizing the sand for native tasks may also help cut back environmental harm and dredging and transport prices, whereas on the identical time diverting glass from landfills. is It is a win, win, win proposition, Ms. Trotman and Mr. Steitz say.
“One other individual within the coastal trade known as it a ‘pop-up ditch,'” Ms. Trautman mentioned. “We are able to generate sediment within the metropolis, which isn’t usually doable.”
At Tulane, Ms. Trautman, who’s from rural Louisiana, studied chemical engineering. Mr. Steitz grew up in Manhattan and Brooklyn, and majored in worldwide growth after spending a spot 12 months volunteering with refugees in Greece. Together with one other Tulane pupil, Max Landy, he began a nonprofit in 2019 known as Plant the Peace, which raised cash to plant bushes.
Mr. Steitz, dismayed by the shortage of native recycling choices, thought he ought to department out into recycling glass. On the time, New Orleans was solely accepting glass from residents as soon as a month and there was a cap of fifty kilos per individual.
The group hadn’t absolutely explored whether or not moist glass could possibly be used for restoration, however went forward and introduced their fundraising plan on social media, the place it caught hearth.
The challenge was scrappy and pushed by a do-it-yourself ethos. They could not afford rubbish cans, not to mention recycling bins with wheels, so Ms. Trotman discovered low-cost, used 55-gallon barrels, which she took, with permission, to a couple church buildings, a pizza store and Mr. Stitz’s. had been stored within the entrance yard.
They saved sufficient to purchase their first glass crusher for just a few thousand {dollars} and shortly found how smelly, soiled and loud the work was. At one level the fraternity brothers complained, although throughout finals week. The police had been additionally known as, though the officers advised the scholars to proceed, Ms. Trautman mentioned.
The enterprise made native information, and their drop-off websites rapidly turned fashionable. They raised funds for extra glass crushers and moved right into a small workshop, which, Mr. Steitz mentioned, “we outgrew from day two.” Aided by extra crowdfunding and a rising staff of volunteers, they moved right into a 40,000-square-foot warehouse in August 2020.
Their preliminary batch went into sandbags for flooding, which they gave away for a steered donation of $5 per donation. An area terrazzo maker needed to crush blue glass, in order that they started sorting their bottles by shade and promoting them to native landscapers. Additionally they promote glass sand and gravel on their web site.
Together with promoting their glass merchandise, and repeatedly internet hosting fund-raisers (one was known as “Glastonbury”) additionally they started providing residential and business glass collections for a price. They expanded curbside pickup to Baton Rouge and most not too long ago to Birmingham, the place they plan to promote cullet, waste glass scrap, for glass manufacturing and maybe fiberglass manufacturing.
“A part of the puzzle is driving demand,” Mr Steitz mentioned. “With any of those we want much more quantity.”
Their first enterprise shopper was Snake and Jake’s Christmas Membership Lounge, a ramshackle, light-festooned dive bar close to the Tulane campus.
“It drives me loopy how everybody’s out right here partying and littering prefer it’s nothing,” mentioned the bar’s proprietor, Dave Clements, a self-described outdated hippie who owns his Half pays Glass $165 a month to gather the bar’s castoffs. . “They’re well-intentioned,” he added. “And I feel that is serving to.”
In 2021, analysis started on the coronary heart of their work, analyzing whether or not their glass was environmentally secure. Julie Albert, an affiliate professor in Tulane’s chemical and biomolecular engineering division, led a staff that discovered the corporate’s glass sand and gravel had been clear, with low ranges of lead and different contaminants. In greenhouse experiments, they discovered that native crops develop properly in glass sand and don’t kill fish or crabs or harm their tender tissues. Undertaking c Awarded 5 million dollars from the Nationwide Science Basis to increase the analysis, and the staff is within the technique of publishing their findings.
After the product is decided to be environmentally secure, set up Glass Half Full a Demonstration project On Pointe-au-Chien tribal land, making a rain backyard, a glass gravel drain and backyard beds. They equipped 100,000 kilos of sand in biodegradable burlap luggage to create berms at Large Department Marsh Nationwide Wildlife Refuge on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain in New Orleans, the place storms and winds have intruded saltwater into recent water.
Nonetheless, there may be skepticism about how successfully glass sand and sediment can restore wetlands or seashores.
James Karst, a spokesman for the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana, a nonprofit group that has labored with Glass Half Full on a number of tasks, pointed to a raft of issues dealing with coastal Louisiana: sinking land, rising sea ranges, rising rivers. Ranges and pure wetlands lengthy. First produced by the logging and fossil gas industries.
“Our issues listed here are huge, and including extra sand to our coastal lagoons is not going to remedy all our issues,” he mentioned.
He additionally mentioned that utilizing dredged materials works to revive small goal websites, a spotlight of Glass Half Full’s work, is dear, unsustainable and unsustainable for land reclamation. Efficient land restoration ought to embody reconnecting the river with wetlands, he mentioned, an effort presently underway.
In an electronic mail, Ms. Trotman mentioned the corporate doesn’t see its product as a panacea, however somewhat “a small a part of the answer to fixing our coastal erosion disaster.”
He famous that the glass they recycle will find yourself in landfills and that, importantly, the corporate is getting native residents to assist the struggling wetlands.
“The extra folks we will get entangled and keen about this matter,” he mentioned, “the higher off we’ll be.”
