Odds are good that you’ve been hearing more and more about recycling lately — whether it’s the ongoing controversy around plastic or the growing market for reusable packaging. But one thing that’s generally not in the dialogue surrounding recycling is something a little more overtly environmental, which is to say: its literal impact on the landscape. Not in terms of pollution or recycling facilities, but using recycled materials to actually change the geography of a particular reguon.
Specifically, a region where soil erosion is an existential concern: the Mississippi River Delta. At the New York Times, Cara Buckley chronicled the work being done by Glass Half Full, a company that began when its founders — then students at Tulane — realized that the city did not offer a curbside option for glass recycling.
New Orleans has an astonishingly high number of bars, breweries and wineries per capita — the highest such concentration in the nation, as of 2022. All of that meant that a lot of glass that could be recycled was instead heading to landfills. Now, Glass Half Full is the sole glass recycling center in the city — and recently received a
Buckley writes that the company’s crushed glass has been used for a host of purposes, including “disaster-relief sandbags, terrazzo flooring, landscaping, wetland restoration and research.” Analysis of the glass sand shows that it’s relatively clean — suggesting that it’s safe for any wildlife that might look to make its habitat there.
Recycling Batteries Can Have an Environmental Paradox
What happens when an ecologically friendly move yields more pollution?Some of the experts Buckley spoke with noted that the work Glass Half Full is doing is only one part of a larger environmental protection effort — something the founders acknowledge. (And as recent history has shown, just adding sand to an at-risk space isn’t always enough to preserve it.) But it’s hard to argue with an initiative that’s reducing waste in landfills and contributing to some environmental restoration.
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