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About Us.
Our Mission
Our goal is to keep glass out of landfills and make it into new materials that support our environment and economy. We hope to build awareness around the many benefits of glass recycling in our community.
For almost one million citizens, Gwinnett County only has a few designated drop-off locations for glass, which could mean a 30-minute drive for some.
Four years ago, Gwinnett County Government and many other Georgia counties announced that they would remove the glass from the single-stream curbside recycling program. In the announcement, the county indicated that residents could dispose of glass by taking it to a drop-off site for recycling or putting it in regular household trash headed for the landfill that will sit there for at least one million years. Although this may have made sense for the single-stream process, we believe it is an environmental and economic miss.
Did you know glass is 100% recyclable and can be recycled endlessly without loss in quality or purity? There are many benefits to glass recycling! Learn more
How it started.
It all began after moving into our new home, where we quickly learned about our area's lack of glass recycling options. One night, after celebrating our new home with a bottle of wine (or two), we went to take them to our recycling bin and noticed the bold letters that say, NO GLASS. We were perplexed and had to figure out what we do with our empty glass bottles. After digging, we learned that single-stream recycling no longer includes glass because it can decrease the quality of recovered materials. Putting all material into a single bin can increase the likelihood of contamination due to broken glass and the propensity to toss non-approved material into the recycling bin.
After research and calls to different waste companies, we learned that there are two drop-off points for the whole county to bring empty glass bottles. We wanted to create a program that makes it easy and convenient to recycle glass. We believe our plan will help divert glass from landfills and repurpose a material that can be recycled endlessly. Rather than becoming a glass recycling facility, we partnered with the existing vendors that already haul glass—specifically transporting glass to recycling facilities like Strategic Materials, Inc. (SMI) in Georgia. SMI is a leading processing facility that crushes glass into a cullet and supplies this to manufacturers who make it into new glass products or other materials made with glass.
We are a small family start-up and a little scrappy, but we believe in recycling and want to make it easy once again for everyone to recycle their glass.