September/October 1991
Glass recyclers from around the country gathered in Los Angeles this summer to take a look at markets for cullet and examine bottlenecks in glass recycling.
By Thomas A. Hemphill
Thomas A. Hemphill is associate market analyst for the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (Washington, D.C.).
“Watch the price of soda ash,” Roger Hecht, president of Allwaste Recycling Inc. (Cleveland), advised glass recyclers trying to keep up with the markets for cullet. Hecht, speaking at a symposium on recycled glass in late June in Los Angeles, identified the price of soda ash (the key ingredient in glass making) as a primary barometer of the demand for color-segregated cullet, noting that it takes 3.5 tons of cullet to replace 1 ton of soda ash in the glass making process.
When batch costs are in the $45-to-$50-per-ton range, said Hecht, "there will be strong demand for cullet. " He pointed out that the use of cullet instead of virgin raw materials can save about $10 per ton in the production of glass in electric furnaces, because lower melt temperatures are required.
Hecht, whose company considers itself the largest glass recycler in the United States, operating 13 plants and six depots around the country, reported that the Glass Packaging Institute (Washington, D.C.), a trade group that represents glass container makers, predicts that the 80 U. S. glass makers consuming cullet will recycle 2.5 million tons of glass in 1991.
Despite that achievement, Hecht noted, there are shortfalls in demand. A steady oversupply of green cutlet in the U.S. market, he explained, is attributed largely to imported beer and wine containers. He illustrated the imbalance by noting that about I million tons more green glass enters the U.S. waste stream annually than is produced in the country during the year.
Regional imbalances in U.S. cullet markets, which Hecht suggested have' grown from the fact that glass-making plant locations don't match the geographic availability of cullet supplies, are creating another type of glut. Relocation of some plants may be necessary to reduce the high freight costs that limit glass recycling in some areas, he suggested.
Though domestic markets are reportedly healthy for clear and brown cullet, Hecht noted that European glass makers should be considered as potential buyers of these materials. For instance, he pointed out, European container manufacturers are currently consuming only about 25,000 tons of clear cullet annually, yet they face soda ash costs as high as $250 per ton, opening the door for more glass recycling.
Several speakers, including Hecht, mentioned that suppliers must keep an eye on a variety of other noneconomic factors that can affect glass cutlet markets, especially the current wave of state recycling and waste reduction legislation buoyed by political and environmental concerns.
Searching for Mixed-Cullet Markets
A primary focus of the symposium, which was sponsored by the Environmental Protection Agency and organized by the Center for Earth Resource Management Applications, was secondary markets for material not wanted by glass makers, especially mixed cullet. John Holzemer, western regional director of public affairs and recycling for Owens-Brockway (Pleasanton, Calif.), predicted that "secondary markets will take what the primary markets won't accept," such as lower-quality and mixed-color cullet.
The symposium emphasized that government is emerging as a primary consumer of mixed cullet, often using it in nontraditional ways. New Jersey is concentrating its efforts on two markets-as an input in road-based aggregate and in storm drains--according to Martin Reisinger, recycling specialist with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection's Office of Recycling (Trenton, N.J.).
Reisinger said that the New Jersey Department of Transportation is changing its specifications to allow use of up to 10-percent mixed cullet in bottom road aggregate--a coarse material that provides the foundation for roads. Since 1.5 million tons of bottom road aggregate is used annually in the state, he noted, this could mean annual demand for up to 150,000 tons of cullet. Reisinger acknowledged, however, that only about 50,000 tons of mixed cullet is generated in the state per year.
National efforts are in the works to alter the Uniform Construction Code to specify that glass cullet can be used as a replacement for gravel and crushed stone as an aggregate in storm drains, Reisinger said, adding that this use clearly holds promise for significant consumption of mixed cullet.
New York City has been using mixed cutlet crushed to less than 3/8 inch to replace sand as an aggregate in road resurfacing for the past four years, reported Harry Watson, assistant city commissioner for asphalt operations. He said the city had been using up to 20-percent cutlet in the asphalt mixture, but has recently reduced the level to 10 percent. Even with this cutback, he said, New York City annually generates about 180,000 tons of cullet not consumed by glass mills and the city's asphalt operations department could consume it all.
Fiberglass Industry Unlikely Consumer
The fiberglass industry has been widely mentioned in the trade press as a potential new consumer of mixed cullet, but David Schlaudecker, director of the environmental affairs department at Owens-Corning Fiberglas Corp. (Toledo, Ohio), said that the industry actually represents only a "limited" market for postconsumer cullet. He suggested that no more than 2 to 4 percent of the fiberglass industry's input needs can be met with mixed cullet.
"We cannot take the low end of the waste stream. The industry has real concerns with contaminants like silver, tin, lead, and aluminum, which will damage our furnaces," he said. Fiberglass makers are also very concerned about the potential effects of mixed cutlet on batch consistency, which "is very important as melting and fiberizing must be in tune to produce a high-quality product," noted Schlaudecker.
"The fiberglass insulation industry at one time took preconsumer bottle cullet as a manufacturing input," he said, adding that "there are virtually no preconsumer bottles available today, as glass container mills reuse this mill scrap themselves.”
Quality Controls
Several of the nearly 25 speakers touched on the importance of cutlet quality in finding worthwhile markets and the relative merits of different types of collection programs in maintaining quality. David H. Weitzman, vice president for the material marketing group at Resource Recycling Technologies Inc. (Vestal, N.Y.) and chairman of the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries's (Washington, D.C.) ad hoc glass cullet committee, emphasized the problems in repeated handling of glass containers, telling the audience that each time glass bottles are “transferred” or handled, about 20 percent of the containers break. Where colors have not yet been separated, therefore, each transfer turns a fifth of the glass into mixed cullet, he noted, which will be relegated to relatively low-value secondary markets--at best. •
Glass recyclers from around the country gathered in Los Angeles this summer to take a look at markets for cullet and examine bottlenecks in glass recycling.