Glass Recycling for Coastal Restoration

RAISE YOUR GLASS TO COASTAL RESTORATION Glass Half Full Turns Glass Garbage Into Coast

By Michelle Nicholson

In February of last year, while the world was heading into lockdown, two college students at Tulane University, Franziska Trautmann of Lafayette and

Max Steitz of New York, were hunkering down to hatch their latest project promoting sustainability and restoration: Glass Half Full. Their prior project, Plant the Peace, has succeeded in planting over 88,000 trees in sub-Saharan Africa. In 2021, Glass Half Full hopes to create new land in coastal Louisiana through an innovative glass-recycling program accessible to people throughout New Orleans.

According to Trautmann, the idea was born organically, over drinks with Steitz—drinks excited about this particular expansion: “This move was so intentional—to move across that, over the course of their years at Tulane, had created quite a lot of glass waste. “Why New Orleans and make recycling more accessible.” are we letting this go to a landfill where it’s not going to decompose?” is the question Residents may bring and sort their glass personally, for free, between 9 a.m. and 5:30 Trautmann posed. “It’s not going to do any good there.” p.m., on Wednesdays at their Joliet Street location and on Mondays and Saturdays at their

Trautmann and Steitz quickly discovered a machine that would crush glass into sand. Louisa Street location. To make recycling with Glass Half Full even easier, they launched Trautmann recalls, “Something told us that we should just go for it, and we launched a a residential pick-up program this past November. Curbside pick-up occurs monthly; the fundraiser. The community just responded. They’re so ready for something like this, ready first crate is $25, and each additional crate is $10. Glass Half Full provides the crates. for New Orleans to be more of a leader in sustainability instead of always lagging behind— There are other ways to join the Glass Half Full movement to turn garbage into coast. and why aren’t we recycling glass as much as we should when we drink the most? I think Both drop-off hubs offer consumers the opportunity to purchase the sand products they the community and the support we got from New Orleanians are the reasons we were make at their Louisa Street facility. Coarse sand can be mixed with compost for gardening, able to get this far and keep going.” and fine sand also may be used for landscaping. They sell colorful powders that artists use

The innovative process implemented by Glass Half Full is a for pigments. And, of course, they have sandbags for protecting source of hope for New Orleans and South Louisiana’s wetlands. homes and businesses from floodwaters. Trautmann clarifies the difference between conventional glass However, one of the most significant ways a person can recycling and their approach: “The main way glass is recycled is support Glass Half Full in their goal to donate their excess sand through a circular economy, where it’s crushed down and then product to charitable causes—to coastal restoration and disaster re-melted into new glass—but that’s extremely expensive, and relief—is to donate to their GoFundMe campaign. Currently, their it would be environmentally taxing to drive it to a place where Louisa Street location houses 120 tons of glass waiting to be they make new glass. So, we decided, why not crush down recycled. Trautmann says, “This glass mountain is the reason we and stop there and use it as a resource that New Orleans does are having a fundraiser right now, in order to get a machine that need? We need sand.” can crush this at a reasonable rate.”

Louisiana’s coastal restoration projects, which have “We’re working with machines from the 80s,” Trautmann relied on a costly dredging process to obtain sand and silt explains. “From the old machines, it’s a larger crushed glass to redistribute at the coast, are coming to a grinding halt. product, which can be re-melted and made into new glass— Trautmann asserts that by converting New Orleans’s glass it’s called gullet. But our bread and butter and the reason we waste to sand, Glass Half Full’s “ultimate goal is to be able to started this was to make sand from glass, and that’s with the replenish our sand resource that is being rapidly depleted and tiny machines. They are handfed, so we can only do one bottle be an alternative to dredging our waterways. Ideally, we’ll be at a time. That’s the main way we get our sand product, so able to get to a point where we’re selling enough products that we are running on an extreme backlog—there’s just no way to the excess sand we have will go towards the disaster relief keep up.” sandbags, coastal restoration, things like that—we’ll be able to The prospects offered by the new machine, which is able to give that away to more charitable causes,” he says. process two tons per hour, are promising. At that rate, the glass

Glass Half Full is off to a strong start, having grown in the mountain may be transformed into sand in about two weeks. past year from a single backyard drop-off on Broadway Street More product in less time and with lower costs means that they to multiple hubs throughout Uptown, before opening their first can build their business and reach their ultimate goal of helping centralized location at 911 Joliet St. Since then, they have to rebuild Louisiana’s coast and wetlands. established a second warehouse drop-off hub at 3935 Louisa If your glass is full, get involved today by visiting St., in the Desire/Gentilly East neighborhood. Trautmann is Glass Half Full founders Max glasshalffullnola.org.

Steitz and Franziska Trautmann, 16 New Year's / Sugar Bowl | Where Y'at Magazine with Miss Tchoupitoulas