If you recycle your glass waste, your New Year’s resolutions might need to include making a regular trip to the closest recycling center.
As of Jan. 1, 2017, the City of Knoxville’s curbside single-stream recycling program will no longer accept glass. Instead, residents will need to take their glass recyclables to one of five recycling centers in the city.
Though residents were previously able to include glass in their curbside carts along with plastic and paper, this has caused a few issues for recycling workers. When different types of glass are mixed together, the end product is lower in quality. And when recyclables are unloaded in a large compacting truck and dumped onto the recycling facility’s floor to be sorted, the glass inevitably breaks into small pieces. Those slivers and particles of broken glass can mix with and contaminate other recyclables, also lowering their value and increasing the likelihood that they will end up in a landfill.
Rachel Butzler, the city’s solid waste manager, says that Knoxville is not the first municipality to realize that glass should not be included with other recyclables in the single-stream process. Places like Harrisburg, Penn. and Omaha, Neb. have also made the decision to exclude glass from single-stream.
“It’s unfortunate, because curbside pickup is so convenient,” Butzler said in a press release. “But because the glass gets broken and commingled, its value is eroded and it has no market. As a result, much of the glass that’s intended for recycling winds up going to the landfill—which is absolutely the last thing that our enthusiastic residential recyclers want.”
This change will also include single-stream receptacles around the city, like containers downtown and at public parks.
But this doesn’t mean the city’s glass waste is fated for the landfill. Residents who want to recycle their glass can take it to any of Knoxville’s five recycling drop-off centers, which can be found on the city’s website. There, the glass will be separated by color and the city’s contractor will be able to find a market for the recycled product.
If you’d like to submit your thoughts on ways to improve the operation of Knoxville’s recycling centers, take this survey. The city is also looking for input on potential locations for new drop-off centers.
Hayley Brundige is a writer and forever-intern studying Journalism and Public Policy at UT. Her work has been featured in Scalawag Magazine and Inverse. She might use you to get closer to your dog.
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