A new, privately-led initiative to resume the recycling of glass in Rome and Floyd County will start in January. Teresa Lartundo will partner with a company Strategic Materials to bring a large glass recycling dumpster to Rome on Jan. 8. The bin will be placed adjacent to the parking area behind Makervillage on North Fifth Avenue. “We’re going to do a four-month trial period to see if we can fill it up to the top once a month,” Lartundo said. “It seems like we have enough interest so far.”
The market for recycled glass in the U.S. has dropped sharply over the last decade, to the point where the Glass Packaging Institute leaders now believe only a third of recyclable glass product get collected in the U.S. The recycling will involve glass materials that are typically used for food or beverage products. The glass can be any color so long as it is something used around the home but not anything like broken window panes or broken light bulbs.
That kind of product mix, coupled with contamination (unclean waste glass) were a large part of the reason that the local center stopped taking in glass almost five years ago. “It was a lot easier to tolerate, taking the glass to the landfill,” said Floyd County Public Works Director Michael Skeen. “Glass can be crushed up when it compacts and it doesn’t really take up much cubic space.”