Three years after the last glass recycling facility in the state closed, in nearby Franklin, the railroad is working with 2M Resources, a Quebec-based company, to revive the industry. “We’re working on creating new recycling streams to get this product out of here,” Grafton and Upton Railroad President Michael Milanoski said. The Franklin shutdown was preceded by the closure of the Ardagh glass bottle factory, just over the line in Milford. That, coupled with a significantly cooled overseas recycling market and its weight, made glass an expensive product to recycle. “When that closed down,” Milanoski said, of the bottle factory in Milford, “there was no demand in Massachusetts.”
At the municipal level, recycling used to bring in a modest income, in addition to the environmental benefit. Now, towns must pay to recycle. The state’s Department of Environmental Protection tried to help solve the issue, awarding more than $250,000 to help Dennis and Groton build glass processing facilities in 2018. Those places crush glass and turn it into aggregate, which can be used in things like road construction. “Glass is heavy,” Milanoski said, referring to transportation costs. “You pay by the ton.” In fact, Milanoski said, the most efficient way to move heavy glass is by rail, rather than trucks.
In Hopedale, trucks bring used glass bottles to the railyard, where 2M machines send them up a high conveyor belt toward a big drop. The smashed results go through another machine to take out paper labels, bottle caps, and any other impurities, transforming them into small, clear pellets.