Glass-tastrophe: Manufacturers say they need more Ohioans to recycle

About 40,000 tons of recycled glass are processed through a Rumpke facility in Dayton every year, destined for a second life as insulation or another go-round as a container for your Coke. That’s the equivalent of 180 million 12-ounce bottles.

It’s also not enough.

“We cannot fill the need right now,” said Rumpke recycling director Steve Sargent. “We have more orders than we can fill.”

An Ohio Environmental Protection Agency report from 2011 found that Ohio’s glass makers were facing a shortfall of as much as 185,000 tons of recycled glass per year.

The sad part, Ohio EPA recycling czar Terrie TerMeer said, is that 90 percent of container glass ends up in landfills, where it will take practically forever to decompose, rather than being repurposed by one of Ohio’s big three consumers of recycled glass — fiberglass insulation manufacturers Johns-Manville and Owens Corning and bottle maker Owens-Illinois (also known as Owens Brockway).

“What we recognize in Ohio is that we have major manufacturers who are in need of glass, so this is an economic issue, a retaining jobs kind of issue,” she said.

TerMeer said the state has been trying to build up the recycled glass market by expanding its footprint — more drop-off centers lowers transportation costs — and bringing bars and taverns into the fold as sources of recycled glass.

A pilot program in Marion attracted 31 bars that contributed about 2.5 tons of glass per week, said Angie Carbetta, Marion County Recycling and Litter Prevention director.

TerMeer said plans are being developed to roll out similar programs in Columbus and then Cleveland.

Sixty-two tons of recycled glass were used at Owens-Illinois’s Zanesville plant every day in 2012, but not all of those bottles came from Ohio users. Recycled glass from Michigan and Pennsylvania is shipped in to make up the shortfall, company spokeswoman Beth Peery said. She described the Zanesville plant’s use of post-consumer glass as “below O-I’s global average.”

Owens Corning, which has its headquarters in Toledo, said recycled glass has become an integral part of its business model, including energy-conservation certifications that require a certain amount of recycled material in its fiberglass. The major glass manufacturers in the state could use every single glass bottle that is thrown away, said Frank O’Brien-Bernini, chief sustainability officer for the company.

“The glass we’re using is being collected in recycling programs around the country, and (the transportation costs) are put on ourselves and the other glass plants in Ohio,” he said.

Michigan has both a deposit law — you get 10 cents back for every bottle you return to a recycler — and rules against disposing of “beverage containers” in a landfill. Its deposit redemption rates for glass bottles are regularly above 95 percent, according to the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Environment. Nine other states also employ a “bottle bill” to encourage recycling. TerMeer said she is not in favor of a deposit program because it favors one material rather than encouraging across-the-board recycling.