you usually need sand to make glass
but this entrepreneur
crushes bottles
back into sand
she co-founded what could be louisiana's
biggest glass recycling operation
and in about two years she saved four
million beer bottles worth of glass from
landfills never let anyone tell you that
individuals cannot make a difference
because all this is thanks to incredible
individuals
glass half full operates in a state with
a disappearing coastline
and it's ramping up at a time when
global supplies of sand are actually
running out
we are using up sand at a faster rate
than it can be naturally created
so volunteers use the crushed up glass
to help rebuild the coastline
but is dumping material made from trash
into nature a good idea
there's a ton of skepticism mostly about
the sharpness of the sand
we went to new orleans to see how one
company is building back shorelines with
worldwide waste
francisca troutman started glass half
full with her boyfriend in february of
2020 while they were still college
students one night during college over a
bottle of wine that we knew would end up
in a landfill we decided instead of
continuing to complain about the problem
and the lack of glass recycling that we
would just do something about it
so we had this idea that was about it no
waste management experience no recycling
experience they raised about eighteen
thousand dollars to cover startup costs
including a machine that could grind up
one bottle at a time
crowdfunding in the beginning was really
crucial it not only got us money but got
us a lot of community support as well
as this literal mountain of glass
started to form in my residential
neighborhood we're like okay we gotta do
something here quick
since moving into this warehouse in
august 2020 they've received a non-stop
avalanche of glass to recycle we're
receiving so much more glass than we're
able to process as you can see by the
mountain behind me
traditional recyclers send the crushed
glass to manufacturers
which mix it with other materials and
then melt it all down to make new
bottles
but fran says there aren't any of these
facilities nearby
and then it doesn't really make sense
environmentally because you're spending
all that gas to send a super heavy
product four hours away
so they decided to skip that step
the goal was always to be able to
recycle the glass locally
glass half full receives about a garbage
truck load of glass per week
people can drop it off for free
or pay to have it picked up
once a can is full we will dump it into
our glass mountain
unless it's a special color
it'll be mixed into here colorful
bottles can be turned into specialty
sand that sells at a higher price
so this is blue sand made from bombay
gin bottles
artists really love to use it people
love to use it in their gardens
but most bottles are thrown onto what
fran calls glass mountain so glass
mountain is always
expanding and contracting we're always
adding glass to it and taking glass away
to be crushed
eventually workers scoop the bottles up
with this loader and dump them into a
crushing machine
it's metered out
into the conveyor belt and it'll go up
this conveyor belt
and hit the hammers where it'll be
crushed
and then turned into sort of a mixture
of sand and gravel and label
the pulverizer leaves behind some larger
chunks of glass that are too big to use
everything that's bigger than 3 8 of an
inch will be taken out
so that'll include labels metals caps
anything non-glass will come out of this
process
they're still figuring out what to do
with these leftovers
the newer models allow you to send this
waste stream back through the system so
we're working on raising money in order
to get that new system
for now it's piling up in the back of
the warehouse
can we reuse it can we recrush it how
can it be utilized instead of sending it
to the landfill brandon max try to get
creative with all kinds of non-glass
stuff people drop off we separate all
the metal for metal recycling and the
plastic we're separating for a special
project stay tuned
like taking dirty cardboard that can't
be recycled to a pig farm to become
compost
at the warehouse some usable sand is
piling up too because one crucial piece
of equipment is too small you can really
see the difference in size
of this compared to our machine so our
machine can process a lot quicker than
this can sift
the sifter filters out any leftover
label pieces and sorts the sand by size
and you just scoop the unsifted product
put it in the top and it'll shake it all
down until it's separated into each of
the five sizes
the largest grains of glass help pay the
bills
glass half full sells them as gravel
some buyers mix it into flooring
the smallest type of sand is a fine
powder this is like the consistency of
flour it's extremely soft i wish
everyone could touch it and walk on it
it goes into sandbags the company gives
away for free people use sandbags to put
up against their doors
up against their homes where anywhere
where water could get in because we're
super prone to flooding here
in between the powder and the gravel is
coarse sand the kind fran and max used
to rebuild the coast so this is like the
size we would be using for coastal
restoration you can see it's not sharp
so it's not going to cut me
at an event called the deployment the
coalition to restore coastal louisiana
dropped about 10 tons of recycled sand
along lake pontchartrain
this is the battlefront that y'all are
helping us to protect today thank you
for coming
fran and max hand out the sand and
burlap bags which were donated by local
coffee roasters
we like being able to move it with
manpower and kind of get as many people
involved as we can it's a really
beautiful thing to see
volunteers load them onto a boat
hey no problem
then the team drags the 35 pound bags to
the site they layer the sandbags in a
line connecting two pieces of land
these sacks will biodegrade in about six
months
u.s fish and wildlife agents returned
with more volunteers a week later to
plant bull rash saplings
the idea is that the plants will take
root and hold the sand in place creating
new land
fran and max spent a year working with
scientists to make sure their product
was safe for ecosystems
we were awarded a grant from the
national science foundation to work with
tulane university scientists and
engineers to dive deeper into that
research
they found that sand made from glass
doesn't leach anything into the water
and that plant life can grow in it
and it actually looks like it grew the
best in the mixture of the recycled
glass sand with the native sand which is
really cool
the researchers haven't tested whether
animals can eat it yet but fran has
and that's actually been tested on my
dog who ate a lot of the sand one day
and we were like
but she uh pooped it out so
all good
that's all really good news because even
though louisiana's land loss has been
slowing down huge chunks of wetlands
could still be swallowed up in the next
few decades
these areas are essential habitats for
wildlife and they help protect nearby
communities from storms
you can imagine a storm which is fueled
by the warm waters of the gulf of mexico
as it begins to cross over wetlands it
begins to weaken
that's especially important in new
orleans because the city is sinking
it was built above sea level in the
early 1700s but today about half of it
is below
meanwhile rising global temperatures
make storms stronger and cause ocean
levels to rise
so new orleans needs all the storm and
flood protection it can get
if that weren't enough there's another
problem fran and max want to take on
a shortage of sand globally
and that's because we use sand in a lot
of things so concrete bones toothpaste
paint
coastal restoration sandbags
but you can't use just any sand
it's a sand shortage of a specific type
of sand which is a coarser a bit more
angular sand
that means desert sand doesn't cut it
it's too rounded from being blown around
by the wind
most industries dredge sand from the
bottoms of lakes and rivers
dredging is really the only mechanism
right now to get
sand extremely costly both
environmentally speaking and
fiscally speaking
a lot of it's used in construction every
year more than 4 billion metric tons of
sand go into glass and concrete for
buildings
glass half full is a long way from
making a dent in that fran and max hope
their story will inspire others to make
a difference
i think this is really
more so the story of a community coming
together
to say we we demand change and we're not
gonna wait any longer
two individuals decided to start this
and now over two million pounds of glass
are not in a landfill and they're making
a difference in other areas
really behind them