Startup recycling company in Louisiana offers solution for glass waste

What’ll occur to this bottle of wine after it’s been completed and thrown away?

That’s the query that Franziska Trautmann and Max Steitz say they contemplated one night time. They thought in regards to the bottle’s future to hitch the over 11 million tons of glass fated for a landfill.

The Tulane College alumni say they then got here up with the concept to show that bottle again into the glass that birthed it. Two years after Glass Half Full NOLA introduced its glass recycling companies to New Orleans, Trautmann and Steitz went from crushing beer bottles of their yard to operating an organization that they are saying has recycled over 2 million kilos of glass.

“I used to be a sufferer of this mindset earlier than I began Glass Half Full NOLA, which is, ‘people cannot do something. It is like all the companies that want to vary and like they’re the issue,’” stated Trautmann. “Then after setting all of this up, I spotted how a lot people can do.”

The corporate is now going viral on TikTok for its satisfying glass-crushing movies. The recycled glass is crushed into sand or glass cullet, that are damaged glass items. The sand or cullet is then bought for flooring, glass merchandise, as gravel for driveways or utilized in sandbags, which is a worthwhile useful resource throughout hurricane season.

The corporate runs off of volunteers, together with Tulane scientists. Whereas the method remains to be in testing, Glass Half Full says recycled glass might doubtlessly be used to assist restore Louisiana coastlines and different pure areas.

Katie Russell, a senior professor in Tulane’s chemical and biomolecular engineering division, stated she desires to assist restore the shoreline as a result of New Orleans is her residence. Russell organizes scholar volunteers for Glass Half Full and says she thinks it’s vital to protect the port city as nature supposed.

“We’re taking a product, a waste product that might be put right into a landfill. And as an alternative, we’re changing it right into a helpful product that can be utilized to do good locally,” stated Russell.

Russell additionally leads college students in conducting experiments to see how the glass will be safely utilized in nature and manufacturing. Louisiana loses a soccer subject price of land each 100 minutes on common on account of coastal restoration, so the corporate is targeted on restoring land, in accordance with Glass Half Full.

“The ability of this Glass Half Full household in New Orleans, Louisiana, is a neighborhood coming collectively to impart the change that they wished. Whether or not that was people donating time, or cash, or experience. It truly is the story of a metropolis or a state, a neighborhood coming collectively to impart the change that they wished to see occur,” stated Steitz.

Trautmann stated she hopes that others may even begin making extra sustainable, small decisions to assist defend the planet. She recalled that when the enterprise first began, she didn’t see a lot traction till the phrase bought out.

“As two youngsters, we lived a reasonably sheltered life in our little two-lane bubble. And unexpectedly, we had been getting inquiries from native nonprofits and organizations and different New Orleanians who wished to assist,” stated Trautmann. “That form of lit the hearth below us to maintain going and make this even greater.”

Trautmann and Steiz consider the little actions folks do every day to maintain the planet are the issues that matter most on the earth.

“Micro actions make up the macro,” stated Steitz.