Know What They're Doing With Your Glass Recyclables

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Absolutely nothing in many cases. Or burying it in landfills. It's cheaper to make glass from sand than to recover it, see, so there's not much market for recycled glass.

In northern Idaho, Kootenai County gave up collecting glass last year. In Oregon, which was the first of 11 states to adopt a bottle deposit law in 1971, Deschutes County stockpiled 1,000 tons of glass at its landfill before finally finding a use for it a couple of years ago - as fill beneath an area for collecting compost.

Glass also has piled up at the landfill serving Albuquerque, N.M., where officials this year announced that a manufacturer of water-absorbing horticultural stones would eventually use up their stockpiles. New York City gave up glass recycling from 2002 to 2004 because officials decided it was too costly.

Sounds like a business opportunity. I wish I had a head for business.