Millions of tons of laminated or architectural glass used in buildings and vehicles are dumped into landfills every year. The challenge is to separate the plastic sandwiched between the panes of glass to end up with “clean” glass and plastic to be sold as commodities to be reused. Rochester’s Watson Recycling started talking to area manufacturer clients that use glass. Glass manufacturers have a failure rate between 10 and 25 percent. One mid-sized manufacturer might send an estimated 3,000 to 5,000 tons of laminated glass to the landfill each year.
Once they identified the opportunity, the Watson R&D team rolled up its sleeves and started designing a device to process the glass for recycling. About two years later, they had a one-of-a-kind machine that successfully transformed a pane of all kinds of laminated glass and mirrors into piles of separate parts that can be recycled.
To read the full story, visit https://news.yahoo.com/growing-rochester-firm-breaks-glass-171600171.html.
Author: Jeff Kiger, Post-Bulletin, Rochester, Minn., Yahoo! News
Image: Photo by Lacey Williams on Unsplash