Recycled glass is dumped at Tucson's Los Reales Landfill, where it is stockpiled for use in construction. But there is little other use for glass in a weak national market. And even this use is controversial: Some residents thought the glass they put into recycling bins would go into new bottles.

James S. Wood / arizona daily star

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A few years ago, a plan to make asphalt from recycled glass seemed to be the way out of a glass glut in Tucson.

That scheme imploded after a resort hotel guest complained about stepping on glass while walking on a "glassphalt" path, recalled the general manager of the company that made the material.

Other customers complained about the sight of glass shards glittering in their driveways in the early-morning sunlight.

Now the glass is stockpiled at a South Side landfill, in mounds nearly twice as tall as an average man and two-thirds the length of a football field.

But there's a difference between now and decades past, when glass, like all other recyclable materials, was buried uselessly, city officials say. Most of today's glass is eventually used for city construction projects: bedding for landfill piping, and backfill for parking lots and utility trenches. The work saves the city a few bucks a ton it would otherwise spend for sand.

These uses don't please some residents who thought the glass they put into recycling bins was actually going into new glass bottles. But the market for glass is weak. Nationally, only 25 percent of all glass is recycled, the lowest percentage of any major recyclable material.

Here are some questions and answers about glass recycling.

Q: Where does the glass go that you put into your recycling bins at home?

A: The city of Tucson and most suburban-based, private residential haulers pick up the bins and truck them to a plant near West Prince Road and Interstate 10. It's run by Recycle America, a subsidiary of Waste Management Inc.

Workers pull whole bottles off a conveyor belt and put them into a separate batch — containing about 17 percent of the glass brought there — for shipment to a glass-recycling company in Mexicali, Baja California. There, Strategic Materials Inc. crushes and removes metals, ceramics and other contaminants from the glass before shipping it to a Mexican bottling company. It turns the glass into whole bottles and ships them to Anheuser Busch in the United States and to Mexican beer bottlers.

Q: What about the broken glass?

A: There's no market for it, say Tucson Solid Waste Management Department officials. Recycle America ships about a truckload every weekday to the Los Reales Landfill, where it piles up until the city can use it. The city recently used 82 tons as backfill to repair a parking lot at its Community Services Building, 310 N. Commerce Park Loop.

Another project placed 400 tons as backfill for a trench for sewer and water lines west of Downtown at the Tucson Origins project, future home of a history museum, a science center, a park, a civic plaza and rebuilt models of mission buildings from the 1780s.

At the landfill last year, the city used 1,000 tons of glass as bedding material, to support piping to collect methane gas that builds up underneath the landfill. The methane goes to a Tucson Electric Power plant at 3950 E. Irvington Road, where it generates electricity.

Q: What about county landfills, where individuals bring trash and recyclables?

A: They don't take glass for recycling. Glass bottles automatically get dumped. County and city officials talked in the past about an agreement for that glass to go to Los Reales for stockpiling, but that didn't go anywhere. But after a reporter called the city's Environmental Services Department last week about the county's glass, Nancy Petersen, the department's deputy manager, contacted the county Department of Environmental Quality about getting negotiations back on track.

In the meantime, DEQ officials say the glass glut is serious enough that it's considering dropping its requirement that all private haulers take glass from their customers for recycling.

Q: Why is the glass market bad?

A: Glass is heavy and costs far more to ship than paper, plastic and other recyclables. "Nobody wants it here," said Don Cassano government and community affairs director of Waste Management for Arizona. "They have to ship it out of state."

Q: We've been putting glass into recycling bins in Tucson since the mid-1990s. What's been its fate?

A: Until early this decade, the city shipped the glass to California bottlers. As fuel prices rose, by 2001 or 2002 the city was paying $30,000 a month to ship it, recalled Don Gibson, the city's recycling coordinator. Ultimately, Recycle America opted to haul the glass to Phoenix for dumping in a landfill.

Outraged Tucson officials halted that practice. Then came the glassphalt experiment in which the city struck a deal with Tucson Ready Mix to take the glass and substitute it for about 10 percent of the sand and fine gravel that goes into asphalt for use on paths, driveways and parking lots.

Q: Where did the glassphalt scheme go wrong?

A: After 20 jobs, the company stopped after customers complained that the glass was a safety hazard. A guest at the Hilton Tucson El Conquistador Golf and Tennis Resort complained of getting a foot cut from the glass on a walking path, recalled a Ready Mix official.

"It blew up in our face," said Mike Smith, now general manager for Southwest Materials, whose parent company, California Portland Cement, has since taken over Tucson Ready Mix.

Ultimately, the company had to cover the glassphalt on 75 percent of the jobs with another material before abandoning the practice.

Q: Is there any hope for glass recycling in Tucson?

A: For the immediate future, not much, said Gibson, the recycling coordinator. The city provided glass samples in the past two years to three companies that asked for and tested them. The companies never got back to him, he said.

For the longer term, the city could engineer a new recycling center with sophisticated glass-sorting technology that might, for instance, use lasers to separate various colors of glass, making individual colors more attractive to buyers. In February, the city will issue a request for proposals to study all possibilities for a recycling center.

But because of the nature of its contract with Recycle America — an extension expires in two years with an option for a two-year extension beyond that — it's not likely officials could contract for, design and build a new recycling center to go on line before 2012, Gibson said.

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