Recyclers see used glass bottles as key to easing worldwide sand shortage
Recyclers see old wine bottles as key to easing a worldwide sand shortage as U.N. warns action is needed to avert a global crisis.
Like many crazy ideas, a possible solution to the global sand shortage started over a bottle of wine.
Max Steitz and Franziska Trautmann, partners in a New Orleans recycling plant, were talking about the shortage as they sipped their "two-buck Chuck" from Trader Joe's two years ago.
They knew the world’s second most-used natural resource, a key component in roads, glass and even breast implants, was running out.
“We kind of pondered the destiny of that glass bottle,” said Steitz, co-founder and co-director of Glass Half Full along with Trautmann. “It was almost certainly doomed to a landfill where it would take about a million years to decompose. And for some reason, that night we were thinking about this profound problem, and we said, ‘OK, why not us?’”
Max Steitz and Franziska Trautmann, partners in a New Orleans recycling plant called Glass Half Full.NBC NewsFifty billion tons of silica sand are used every year, including in cellphones, computer screens and microchips -- hence the name “Silicon Valley.” Of all the raw materials on Earth, only water is consumed more than sand.
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