Background.  When the City of Oberlin reinvented its recycling program in fall, 2020, we no longer accepted glass bottles and jars for recycling.  Recycling costs had risen steeply, imperiling the entire program.  We estimate that the City was recovering between 200 and 250 tons of glass per year.  At $100/ton plus contamination charges, glass “recycling” alone cost between $35,000 and $40,000 year – approximately double our previous annual processing cost for all recyclables.  And, the Republic Services Lorain County Recycling Center uses a large portion of its recovered glass to build roads in the landfill.  While this is a beneficial re-use, it doesn’t meet public expectations for recycling.  Numerous changes had to be made to ensure the economic viability of recycling in Oberlin and glass recycling was cut from the City’s program.

Even Further Back.  Almost 30 years ago, in 1995, the City of Oberlin applied for and received a “Special Project Grant” from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.  We proposed to collect and crush glass collected in our (then) source-separated curbside program, test the structural engineering properties of the glass cullet, develop specifications for its beneficial re-use as road base and then re-construct a street with the specified mix.  Smith St., between South Main and South Pleasant, was rebuilt with tons of glass mixed into the stone road base.  It’s not a high traffic street but it hasn’t required structural repair or repaving in almost 30 years!

Glass Recovery Program Overview.  The Public Works Department has applied for and received an OEPA Recycle Ohio Grant.  This is an intra-departmental initiative including Public Works Administration, the Recycling Office, our General Maintenance Division and the City Engineer.  We are using most of the grant money to reinvent our mid-1990’s success on Smith St.  OEPA funding has been used to purchase a glass crusher and related equipment to develop a local Glass Recovery Program.  This will be a drop-off program where residents and businesses can bring rinsed glass jars and bottles to a specified location at dates/times to be announced.

GMD staff will process the collected bottles and jars through our glass crusher which will crush the glass to approximately ¾” size and smaller.  This glass cullet will be mixed with ODOT 304 limestone at a 3 parts glass to 7 parts stone ratio as specified by the structural engineer.

This glass/stone mix will be used by Public Works as trench backfill for sanitary sewer or storm sewer repairs.  Once adequate quantities have been generated, this mix may also be specified by the City Engineer as structural base material for use in appropriate capital projects.  For scale, we estimate that approximately 400 tons of similar backfill material will be required for this year’s North Park St. Reconstruction project.  This would equate to about 160 tons of glass.  The multi-use path along SR58 South would require about 300 tons of glass.  Success will be measured by how much post-consumer glass that we recover, mix and beneficially re-use and at what cost.

Both public sector and private sector haulers and processors face the same issue – how to sustainably manage a post-consumer commodity when the raw materials are inexpensive by comparison.  We hope this project will demonstrate the cost-effective beneficial re-use of mixed glass cullet in a way that can have a larger ripple impact outside of Oberlin on regional recycling infrastructure and in the heavy construction industry.

Pilot Program.  Not surprisingly, there are ‘lessons learned’ from our first project in the 1990s.  Before we kick-off regular and on-going drop-off collection service, it’s important to make sure that our personnel can safely operate and properly maintain the new glass crusher.  There will be a learning curve in transporting glass bottles and jars in self-dumping hoppers, loading the material into the glass crusher, operating the crusher, moving the glass cullet to our materials storage building and mixing it with stone at the appropriate ratios.  When the time comes, staff and our contractors will also be learning how to transport, place and compact this new mixture to achieve its intended structural purposes.  We’re starting off with a Pilot Drop-Off Program to collect enough glass to work through both anticipated and unforeseen challenges.

Thank you all that dropped-off glass at our 9/21 Shed day event! In addition to shredding over a ton of paper, we also collected 3 hoppers full of glass bottles & jars!

Check back and stay tuned for our next glass drop-off date.  
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DOs and DONTs

Glass Bottles and Jars ONLY

  • All glass bottles and jars need to be rinsed clean. They don’t need to be washed but they do need to be rinsed.
  • Maximum size container is 1 gallon.
  • No lids. Container rings and labels are OK.

Please DO NOT bring windows, mirrors, crystal, light bulbs or any other type of glass.  No ceramics or porcelain will be accepted.