Interview with the Expert: Glass Recycling | Elam Leed

Little did he know sitting in his undergrad art class that a love of glass blowing would turn into a glass technology career, allowing Elam Leed to merge his enjoyment of art with math and physics. ?Today, 23 years later, Elam is leading a team responsible for glass recycling and other sustainability initiatives at JM. As an R&D Platform Leader, he is always on the lookout for new and inventive ways to reduce, expand, and innovate.?

Check out all the valuable insights Elam provides regarding glass recycling and other innovative JM initiatives in the first of our Interviews with the Expert series.

Hi Elam, so good to speak with you today. We are really excited to learn more about your position at JM, your experience with glass, and your insights on opportunities for further industry innovation and sustainability.?

?Q: How long have you been at JM? What are some of the things you’ve observed during your career that show the evolution and growing importance of sustainability at JM??

?A: I’ve been at JM for 17 years and it seems like the more we focus on sustainability, the more we are able to connect it to things that can help us even beyond sustainability. Glass melting is energy intensive and how we operate our furnaces has an impact on CO2 emissions and our financials.?Sustainability and profitability go hand in hand in the area of energy reduction and we are looking to continually set ambitious targets and goals for ourselves.?

Use of Recycled Glass?

Q: What are the advantages of glass that makes it an attractive material??

A: Glass production can utilize high levels of recycled content as well as abundant and rapidly renewable natural minerals, like silica sand. Glass can be a cost-effective and high-performing material for many applications.?The energy savings achieved in just the first year from the use of fiberglass thermal insulation is typically 12-times the energy used produce the insulation.

Q: How is recycled glass introduced and included in JM products’ life cycle??

A: Recycled glass – what our industry calls cullet – from external partners is delivered to JM plants by truck or rail and stored in silos in a manner similar to the handling of other mineral raw materials. This recycled glass can be post-consumer – from bottles or jars – or can be post-industrial, from other glass products that are not saleable. The recycled glass cullet is mixed with other raw materials at controlled ratios and fed into the glass melting operations.?The fiberglass insulation we produce has a known post-consumer recycled content based on the input of recycled glass cullet relative to other raw materials.

JM Sustainability?

Q: How does glass recycling contribute to meeting JM’s sustainability goals??

A: Here we can address two similar concepts – not only glass recycling but also glass reuse. Glass recycling contributes to three key JM sustainability goals: ?CO2 emissions reductions, use of external recycled materials, and reducing the amount of waste generally going to landfills. ?Glass reuse, which is glass internally produced but which isn’t made into a final product, is technically not considered recycled glass.?However, this glass is also fed directly back into the process where possible, and this also reduces our CO2 emissions and lowers the amount of waste we send to landfills.?The CO2 emissions are reduced through this reuse and through recycled cullet use, each of which enables lower melting energy and less use of carbonate raw materials. Recycled glass cullet is the largest contributor to our goal of utilizing external recycled materials, and we use hundreds of millions of pounds of recycled glass each year.

Q: What capability or capacity does JM have to recycle glass and does it utilize any partners to divert glass from landfills??

A: A number of capabilities have been added over the years to JM plants to handle external glass recycling and internal glass reuse. For external recycled glass, extra raw material storage and feeding capabilities have been added, as well as the ability to add materials to control glass redox and counteract the influence of organic contaminants in the recycled glass. And of course, for external recycled glass cullet, we rely on our vendor partners to process glass waste into usable raw material for JM.?

Q: What are the business impacts of using recycled glass? Environmental impacts? (ie. GHG emissions, energy, waste)

A: The key business impacts of recycled glass are reduced reliance on processed minerals and reduced energy use in our processes.?Because we use a lot of energy in our process, using recycled cullet helps us reduce cost – so, the more quality cullet, the better.??In some cases, the lower energy requirements from using recycled glass and can extend the life of our glass melters. The beneficial environmental impacts include reduced waste-to-landfill as well as reduced CO2 emissions from both lower energy use and from reduced use of carbonate raw materials.?The use of recycled glass reduces our CO2 emissions by tens of thousands of tons per year.

Q: Is it more economically beneficial for JM to use recycled glass rather than virgin materials?

A: It varies by location, but in general the use of recycled glass is financially favorable for us. It can depend on the local availability, quality, and cost of recycled glass. We know how much energy we save from every ton of recycled glass we use. There are also savings when we use recycled glass because JM can offset the cost of additional raw materials necessary to produce glass since the initial manufacturer already procured and incorporated those materials into what we use.

Challenges and Recommendations

Q: As a business, what is your biggest obstacle to recycling glass, or more glass?

A: The limited availability of clean processed, recycled glass with low organic content limits the use of recycled glass today. Single stream municipal recycling, where different recyclables are mixed, makes it more difficult to separate glass from other materials.?Organic contamination, whether from residues in the containers, labels, or contamination from other recycled material, can affect our all-electric melters and cause issues with meeting our environmental permits, so we strictly limit this contamination in our purchased cullet.

This is an issue that reaches far beyond JM, so we work with organizations such as the North American Insulation Manufacturers Association (NAIMA) and the Glass Recycling Coalition (GRC) to raise awareness. For our immediate needs, it’s up to us to find vendors and potential sources not being used today that are also geographically and financially feasible.?

Being a part of a large trade organization is very helpful, but we still have a long way to go in the U.S. In Europe about 80 percent of glass containers are recycled, while in the U.S. it’s only about 30 percent.?

?Q: Given what we know about the low availability of recycled glass, how important is it for JM to reuse as much glass as possible internally?

A: We reuse much of our internally generated glass scrap and we are always looking for ways to use more.?We don’t have a goal for the amount of glass scrap we use; instead, we have a goal to reduce our waste-to-landfill.?The best way to reduce our waste-to-landfill is to improve our efficiencies and our yield so we generate less scrap in the first place.?There are limits to how much we can reduce scrap, so in some cases it makes sense to implement new processing equipment to better allow scrap to be reused, such as the one recently built at our Trnava, Slovakia, plant.

Q: How does a business with so many moving parts facilitate recycling to scale? How did you start? Are there any exciting future plans at JM you can share with us today??

A: Recycled glass use on a large scale requires significant effort and collaboration within JM, especially from our Glass Technology, Procurement & Logistics, and Operations organizations. It’s not something that happens overnight, and we’ve worked at increasing our use of recycled glass over many years. It’s important to always be on the lookout for new partners to increase the availability of recycled glass. We’ve doubled our use of external recycled glass over the past 10 years at JM.?As with other raw materials, we develop relationships with suppliers, conduct trials to evaluate new sources, and continue to monitor the material quality over time.

As we look to the future, we are considering a wide range of potential actions to meet our sustainability goals and reduce our carbon footprint.?Energy efficiency, waste reduction, and even further electrification will likely play significant roles in our path forward.?

Q: Now we want to end on a personal note because it’s my understanding that you and your family made handblown glass awards for a team innovation award at JM. Can you tell us more about the awards and your love of glassblowing??

A: Yes, my family and I made the awards pictured below including the piece in the center for the Scottsboro TPO Team, who won our Innovation Award this year. For us, glassblowing is a family affair. My wife, kids, and two brothers all enjoy spending time in the studio to blow glass. It’s a fun tradition to be able to pass on. Whenever I visit a JM glass plant, it is hard not to imagine opening a door on the furnace to blow glass!?