The mission of the Solid Waste & Recycling Program is to divert valuable reusable materials from the waste stream and provide them to recycling markets, eliminating much of the trash that ends up in landfills and incinerators.

Clear Solutions for Glass Recycling
MontPIRG is working to make sure glass recycling has a permanent place in Montana.  Student interns working on the glass recycling campaign are focusing on building support from communities for solutions they hope to take to the legislature next January.

Unlike other recyclables, glass is too costly to ship to nearby recycling centers in Denver or Seattle.  “This means that communities are forced to be creative in how they recycle glass,” said MontPIRG intern Martin Fahrney.  “A few communities have been very innovative, but most communities don’t have the time or the funds to invest in new recycling programs.”

So MontPIRG is working to make funds available through the Montana Department of Transportation  for the purchase of portable glass crushers.  Many communities across the country successfully use glass crushers to create building materials.

Recycled glass is a virtually free building material that can be used in everything from roads to backfill to insulation, if processed correctly.

“What we have here is a building resource that we are sending to the landfill by the truckload everyday,” said Erin Heidrich, MontPIRG intern.  “If Montana were to purchase a transportable machine that could move from community to community and process waste glass, cities wouldn’t have to struggle to maintain glass recycling programs.”

Communities in Montana have worked to establish glass-recycling programs. These programs have struggled due to a lack of statewide support. Now there is a way to turn used glass into a valuable resource throughout Montana.

 MontPIRG is helping to draft a bill to be introduced in the 2003 legislative session that would provide glass pulverizers for your use and benefit. Cities and towns across Montana can use these pulverizers to process glass into sand and smooth gravel for use in various municipal projects. In peer states such as Taos, New Mexico and King County, Washington pulverized glass is already used in road construction, community water supply filtration, and even in playgrounds.

A state wide glass recycling program will benefit communities by decreasing costs for waste and raw material transportation, and by extending the life of your landfill. The glass aggregate from these pulverizers is also an environmentally friendly alternative in that it decreases air and water pollution by replacing resources that require excavation.