7 minute read
Lammergeier Glass Recycling: turning trash to treasure
Lammergeier Glass Recycling: turning trash to treasure
by LeeAnna Tatum
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“Glass, an inorganic solid material that is usually transparent or translucent as well as hard, brittle, and impervious to the natural elements. Glass has been made into practical and decorative objects since ancient times, and it is still very important in applications as disparate as building construction, housewares, and telecommunications. It is made by cooling molten ingredients such as silica sand with sufficient rapidity to prevent the formation of visible crystals.” As defined by the Encyclopedia Britannica
Glass is everywhere in our homes: we drink from it, watch birds and sunsets through it, eat salsa from it, preserve garden harvests in it and protect precious photos behind it. In the food industry, it is used extensively for packaging, storing and serving foods, beverages and condiments.
But what happens to glass when it is no longer of use to us? Wine bottles, beer bottles, soda bottles, baby food jars, pickle jars, perfume bottles, skin cream jars … the list is almost endless.
As a society, we’ve come to view plastic as the number one enemy of the environment and we might be convinced that by purchasing items packaged in glass, we’re doing the environment a favor. And in many ways that’s true … with a caveat.
When was the last time you tried to recycle all that glass? Chances are quite high that glass is not allowed in your recycling centers and even if it’s ok to put it in your bin, it could still end up in a landfill. This, despite the fact that glass is literally the most recyclable material out there.
This is a problem that entrepreneur and glassenthusiast Malena Gauss is working to address in Savannah and surrounding areas.
Gauss came face to face with this problem when her glass upcycling business was abruptly disrupted by the COVID-19 shutdowns in March of 2020. Left with mountains of bottles that she had collected for upcycling projects and no access to the public through her showroom, Gauss turned to the internet to find a solution for disposing of the accumulated glass.
“I started making calls and no one in a 300 mile radius would take the glass,” Gauss explained. “And I thought, ok well there’s a problem - I can’t find anywhere to take the glass. And I did research and more research. The deeper I dug, the more garbage I found - literally.”
Gauss also knew from experience that she was not alone in seeking direction for recycling glass. During the few months that her glass upcycling and lighting business had been going, she was contacted with some frequency by businesses and individuals seeking an outlet for their used glass.
“One of the first places I reached out to was Ghost Coast Distillery,” Gauss said. “And they were completely on board. They said we know Savannah is not recycling glass and if we can save it from the landfill that would be great - we’ll be honest we go through a lot.”
“I started small in November (2019),” she continued. “Very quickly word spread about this girl who was doing something with glass and by December, a month later, I was getting calls from about 10 to 20 people a week asking me about recycling glass. I said, ‘no, I upcycle glass, I’ll take what I can’.”
Knowing there was a market on the receiving side of things, Gauss began researching the demand for glass.
“And I was like, I’m going to call your bluff. So, I started doing research on the other end of the spectrum and I found 10 manufacturing facilities in Georgia alone that are not only utilizing recycled crushed glass but they are in heavy demand of it, some of them even importing from Europe paying triple the cost because they can’t get it here because no one is collecting it.”
Despite the critics, Gauss believed she was on to something. She had a good understanding of the problem: too much glass going into landfills instead of being recycled and a deficit of crushed glass material in the US. Thus her new business venture Lammergeier Glass Recycling (LGR) was created to be part of the solution.
Gauss’ critics aren’t wrong. There is a reason, in fact many of them, that so little glass (only 33%) is recycled in the US. One of the main reasons is that most recycling facilities (including the one currently collecting for the City of Savannah) use single-stream recycling collection methods. In other words, everything that is deemed recyclable from cardboard to glass is collected in the same bin.
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By not having the customer pre-sort recyclable materials into two bins - one for glass and one for all other materials - the quality of the crushed glass becomes degraded. For this reason, much of the glass that ends up in recycling bins actually ends up in landfills. By using single-stream collection methods, the costs involved for actually recycling the glass are often prohibitive.*
However, with Gauss’ approach, glass is the only material her company handles. Customers sort their recycling so that only glass is placed in LGR bins thereby avoiding the contamination and problems associated with single-stream recycling centers.
By only accepting the one material other recyclers don’t want anyway, LGR can generate a crushed material that has value to manufacturers.
It’s this principle, in fact, that is behind the company name. “‘Lammergier’ is German,” Gauss explained, “the literal translation is lamb vulture. Vultures eat waste and turn it into nutrients for the earth.”
It’s early days for Gauss and LGR, but everyday brings new customers who pay a monthly fee to have their glass collected for recycling instead of tossing it in the trash. Clients include both businesses and individual households. Gauss is also actively seeking municipal contracts which would enable her to grow her business much more quickly.
To get the attention of the larger manufacturing companies that buy crushed glass, LGR needs to be able to deal in tonnage and that is the goal currently being pursued. In the meantime, the crushed glass that she currently has in stock can be sold locally to construction companies and others that have use of what is essentially sand.
“The mindset of the powers that be is ‘at least it’s not in our landfill.’ But glass shouldn’t be in any landfill! It’s the only material that’s infinitely recyclable. No matter how many times you crush it and melt it and remake a bottle - a billion times you can do it.”
Though she never envisioned having a facility to process crushed glass, Gauss has developed a process that involves sorting glass by color and pulverising into different sizes, the finest grains being sand that can be used in glass manufacturing. It can also be used by construction and fiberglass companies in place of sand.
“Why are we dredging the second most used resource in the world, destroying habitats, Gauss questioned. “Nobody is thinking of a solution especially for a material that we are just throwing away.”
“I know I’m just one little lady,” Gauss said with a smile, “but it needs to change.”
When you have a big idea, the naysayers and critics can be quick to bring it “down to size”. But this “little lady” has bright ideas and big ambitions to take on an enormous challenge one small step at a time.
Here at Southern Soil, we applaud individuals who find ways to not only find unique solutions to existing problems, but who make something positive out of a negative. Malena Gauss is literally building a business from something even other recyclers view as trash. One man’s trash, could very well be this woman’s treasure and we wish her great success in her endeavors!
To learn about Lammergeier Glass Recycling, please check out their website!
*I don’t do this very often, but please take a look at this article from Chemical and Engineering News which does a fantastic job of explaining glass recycling and why we are failing at it here in the US.
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