Darryl McDonald, Resource Recovery Services team leader for the Town of Okotoks, holds crushed glass in front of a massive pile of glass on Friday at the Okotoks Recycling Depot. The Town is hoping to find markets for the processed recycled glass in hopes of keeping it out of the landfill. photo by Lyle Aspinall for the Western Wheel |
By Tamara Neely
Staff Reporter
The Town of Okotoks has a huge pile of glass that has been collecting behind the recycling depot for a year, but they have a plan.
The pile started in May when the Town’s broker stopped buying used glass from municipalities across southern Alberta.
Instead of taking the easy route and diverting glass into the landfill, the Town of Okotoks decided to keep collecting it and pursue an environmentally sensitive solution. Now they are proactively seeking their own markets and processing the glass to make more marketable.
Darryl McDonald, resource recovery team leader for the Town of Okotoks, said it didn’t take long for the Town to decide to continue collecting glass despite not having a market for it; they were prepared for the effort and time it would take to find a new market for recycling glass.
“I went to talk to my boss Dave Robertson (operations manager for the Town of Okotoks) and, number one, he said we’re not going to take it to a landfill, it’s just wrong. Secondly, council gave us the okay to buy a machine so we can start processing it ourselves and not take it to landfill,” said McDonald.
The grinding machine, which is the only one in southern Alberta, opens new markets for used glass because it’s easier to handle and transport and can be used in a ground-down form. For example, the glass pebbles can be used instead of small rocks in flowerbeds.
The glass can be ground into the size of rock salt or finely ground to the texture of sand, and the grinding process smoothens the sharp edges making it possible to use for decorative landscaping.
McDonald is also looking to cement and asphalt producers as
potential buyers, as well as a
company in British Columbia
that makes new glass from
post-consumer glass.
“The farther it goes, the more expensive it is to get there, so we’ve got to keep that in mind,” McDonald pointed out.
Over the past year the resource recovery team have been accumulating the glass, becoming familiar with the grinding process, determining optimum grind size and investigating potential buyers for the glass.
They also want to gauge how much glass they can expect residents to recycle each year.
McDonald explained that understanding the yearly supply is important; if a buyer needs 100 tonnes per year, for example, McDonald doesn’t want to promise that until he knows what inflow of glass can be expected.
“Once we clean up our own backlog (of glass), then we’ll be entertaining receiving glass from other municipalities in the area,” said Robertson.
The public is encouraged to bring in all colours of glass to the recycling depot, but keep an eye out for plastic.
“One of the problems we’ve had is the plastic jars that look like glass,” said McDonald. “Our machine doesn’t like them, they plug it up.”
Facial cream jars are chameleons – they seem like glass, but many are actually plastic.
“In between our glass bins we’ve got a bin with a sign that says if you’re not sure what it is, throw it here,” he said, “or ask a staff member.”
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