Readers Take Issue With Sonoita Landfill’s Glass Recycling
The PRT received two reader responses to last month’s front page article on the Sonoita landfill. Both were concerned with the landfill’s current recycling of glass.
In the article, county landfill manager Karl Moyers stated that recycling glass costs the county money, because by the time a truck gets to Phoenix from Nogales, transportation costs are $400, and the glass is worth only $200. He added that there had been talk about buying a crusher and keeping crushed glass on hand here in the county to use in building roads, but that, according to engineers, glass is not an adequate substitute for any construction material. In order to sell recycled glass from the landfill to the closest source, in Phoenix, the glass must be in an amount of 25 tons. Moyers estimated that it might take a year to achieve that amount; nevertheless, the landfill is accumulating glass toward that end.
Chuck Hammond of Sonoita, a former chemical engineer, wrote that he once ran a recycling program for Aramco, an Arabian-American oil company in Saudi Arabia. He referred to a British article about the demand for primary aggregate sources from the concrete industry and the incentive to develop alternative aggregate sources from waste materials. The article stated that “crushed recycled glass can be used as a complete fine aggregate replacement” and cited research as to the benefits of using finely ground glass powder at rates of greater than 20 percent of mass in cement. He referred readers to http://www.concrete.org.uk/fingertips_nuggets.asp?cmd=display&id=783 for more information.
Steve Raynis, also from Sonoita, sent us information about a glass recycling program in Santa Rosa, California. The county secured a grant in conjunction with ARC, a resident care facility for developmentally disabled adults. They created a program whereby glass is collected curbside, sorted by ARC residents, and run through a processing system that removes labels and tops and pulverizes the glass, producing a gravel and sand product. The county plans to initially use the product at various government and nonprofit sites and hopes eventually to market and sell it. The product can be used for many purposes, including parking lot gravel, decorative mulch, and septic system filtration material. Santa Rosa County estimates that the landfill saves 1,000 cubic yards of space each year as a result. Readers who would like to learn more about the program are referred to Santa Rosa Clean Community System, Inc. at (850) 623-1930.