Glass Industry News

Ripple Glass upgrades plant to keep more glass out of the landfill

, Ripple Glass

When Ripple Glass was founded in 2009, we set out bins across the metro to collect glass and built a state-of-the-art processing facility to process the glass. That first year, Ripple collected and processed a little over 10,700 tons of glass. Throughout the past thirteen years, we have expanded our collection to over 100 purple drop-off bins in the Kansas City metro, over 100 communities across nine Midwest states, over 300 businesses and multi-family homes, and are now piloting a curbside collection program. With that growth, more glass was collected, and more glass was kept from area landfills. Today, we collect and process over 45,000 tons of glass annually!

 

In the past few years, we noticed some very important equipment in our plant was becoming outdated and not recovering as much glass as we had hoped – specifically our optical sortation equipment. To provide some background, when the glass enters our plant, the bottles and jars still have lids, caps, neck-rings, labels, and other things that come with container glass. In addition, we often receive non-glass items that feel like glass (ceramic, stone, porcelain). The porcelain, ceramic, and stone are especially harmful to our end-users because they melt at a much higher temperature than glass, so it’s extremely important that we remove them before they get crushed with the rest of the glass.

There are stop-gaps in place all throughout the process to separate the glass from those non-glass items and the big one is the first optical sorter. Picture a river of glass that flows down a waterfall and is then hit with laser beams. Those laser beams look for non-glass items and when identified, a strong pulse of air pushes them to a different stream, separating them from the glass. The second optical sorter looks for color, specifically separating the brown or amber glass from the rest of the colors.

 

Processing plant is ready for upgrades

In 2021, we applied for a grant and received funding through the Missouri Environmental Improvement and Energy Resources Authority (EIERA), in cooperation with the Department of Natural Resources and Department of Economic Development with two goals in mind: investing in the future of glass recycling in our region and improving the capture and recovery of glass in our current process. 

In addition, the impact Ripple Glass has made in glass recycling stood out to the Closed Loop Fund. The Closed Loop Leadership Fund is Closed Loop Partners’ private equity fund, focused on acquiring best-in-class circular business models that are fundamental to keeping plastics and packaging, food and organics, electronics, and textiles out of landfills and within a circular system. Because of our efforts and dedication to making glass recycling a circular economy, they decided to invest in the upgrade project and helped fund the improvements.

With this grant funding, we were able to update the obsolescent optical sortation equipment and in return, increase the capture and recovery of recycled glass. This upgrade will target the optical sortation system that identifies ceramic, stone, porcelain, and/or any other non-glass materials. In addition, the equipment will be able to better “see” true glass pieces that may be partially obscured on the processing line. The outcome of the upgrade allows us to retain additional glass to send to our end-users and avoid landfilling glass that was previously not identified properly. We hope to continue our growth and allow for even more glass to be kept out of the landfill for years to come!

, © Ripple Glass

Les informations publiées sur notre portail sont soumises au droit d´auteur et appartiennent à la société en question resp. à la source des nouvelles. Tous les droits sont réservés expressément. N´importe quel utilisateur qui accède à un tel matériel peut faire ainsi seulement pour sa propre utilisation personnelle, et l´usage d´un tel matériel est au risque unique de l´utilisateur. La redistribution ou toute autre exploitation commerciale d´un tel matériel de nouvelles est expressément interdite. Là où un tel matériel de nouvelles est fourni par un tiers, chaque utilisateur accepte d´observer et être lié par les limites spécifiques de l´utilisation s´appliquant à un tel matériel de nouvelles. Glass Global ne représente ou n´approuve pas l´exactitude ou la fiabilité d´aucune des informations citées dans les nouvelles ou pages externes auxquelles on se réfère ici.

Should the content or the design of these sites violate third parties rights or legal prescriptions, we kindly ask you to send us a respective message without invoice or cost. We guarantee that passages where the claim is considered as justified will be removed immediately, without any necessity to involve any lawyer into this issue. We will reject any claim caused by submission of a honorary note in this regard without any prior contact and confirmation of the issueby us and we reserve the right ssue counter claim ourselves because of violation of aforesaid conditions.



Info Grid

Glass studies

Updated worldwide glass study 2024

plants.glassglobal.com

Updated hollow glass study 2024

Request more information

Updated float glass study 2024

Request more information

Further glass market studies

Request more information

Portrait de la société



Updated worldwide glass market study 2024 available now for flat, container glass and tableware

We have updated our international studies on flat glass, container glass and tableware for 2024.

This unique software provides a global overview about glass producers and technical details. Easy to use and clear tables summarize information and data about glass makers such as: Glass types: flat glass, container glass, tableware, production capacities in regions and countries, number of furnaces, furnace types, year of construction, glass types and sub-types, products, project information, special news and downloads.

Further databases supplying demoscopic data and import and export data complete the market survey. Based on these data, prepare individual country profiles with information about local production capacities, local market sizes and expected demand in the future.

Request your offer via plants.glassglobal.com.

Updated container glass study 2024

X

Updated float glass study 2024

X

Further glass studies and reports 2024

X