Earlier this year, Arlington County, Virginia removed glass from their curbside recycling program, "A significant drop in the market value of glass recyclables means it is no longer economically or environmentally sustainable for the County to collect them via single-stream recycling."

They have two drop-of locations, where residents can drop off glass "for crushing and reuse as construction and landscaping material."

(https://newsroom.arlingtonva.us/release/arlington-shifting-g...)

The answer, unless you want to check the price of commodities each morning, is to recycle glass and bottles anyway and let the recycler decide if it’s economically efficient to send it to the landfill or to reprocessing.

Depends on the area, or so I learned recently upon moving to Montana, where they don't recycle it. Apparently most recycled glass is crushed up and used as roadbase. In MT, gravel is dirt cheap, and so it's not economical to use glass for construction, so into the landfill it goes.

As for recycling glass into other glass, I can't say.

Making glass from scratch is incredibly energy intensive, and glass impurities can be handled (purified), so it always makes sense to recycle glass. Don't let your officials tell you any different.

I heard on a recent podcast from a Dutch recycler that recycling glas only saves ~10% of energy creating new glass. Melting the glass requires heat, and the raw material is not much more expensive than collecting used glass.

You're not filling a landfill and you're not gathering more raw material. Both seem like a win, especially if it's cheaper, even by just a little.

> Making glass from scratch is incredibly energy intensive

Not much more than melting existing glass. It's not like aluminum, where melting is much cheaper than refining in the first place.

> glass impurities can be handled (purified)

It's much easier to handle impurities when you start with clean sand.

Not in single stream recycling. The problem? Glass gets crushed and ruins other recyclable materials.

Also glass is very heavy when compared to a similar strength container made of plastic. That is why plastic took over the market.