I remember when the milkman delivered milk in glass bottles and after drinking the milk we put the empties out for him to pick up on the next delivery. The empty bottles were then cleaned thoroughly before refilling for the next customer. A much more environmentaly process and much more efficient.
Used to reuse soda and beer bottles , but recycled wine and liquer bottles. now most are plastic or aluminum, and much more wasteful of energy and materials.
With new ultra light plastic bottles, manufacture and shipping requires less energy. those old style refillable bottles were half the weight of the product. One truck can now deliver what used to take two trucks. That alone debunks your theory. But wait! There's more! Cleaning and sanitizing a glass bottle uses more energy than making a new plastic bottle. One more point. All these recycling schemes rely on people donating empty bottles and in some cases going so far as to deliver them to a collection point. None of which is ever counted when calculating recyclings carbon footprint.
@@bobhart677 plus, the fresh plastic has a special vitamin chemical that uses patented slow release technology to infuse the milk , the vitamin chemical , or vitamin C if you will, mimics hormones so closely that your body can't differentiate between the two! No more worrying if the boys are getting enough estrogen now, just make sure they have 3 vitiman C packed glasses a day and before you know it, little mikey will be zipping up his dress on his own , and Stevie will be at the top of the volleyball team ! Don't think we forgot the girls, with a hearty helping of extra vitamin C twice a day, they' ll be seniors before they finish 4th grade !! That's fantastic!! CUT!!! ( Kids in the commercial all began groaning and clutching their stomachs while rolling on the floor)
@@dont.ripfuller6587 If you think protecting people from mystery chemicals doing weird things is more important than using scarce resources wisely. Well, that's your right.
@@bobhart677 But wait! Turns out many plastics disrupt hormones and the endocrine system - leading to the new pandemic of 8 year olds on their period, infertility, and a host of other health problems. Each year, we find out plastics aren't as safe as we once thought. Black plastic (found in your coffee makers and tv dinner trays) are likely the next to be banned as toxic-as-****. Glass is inert. Safe. Plastic is questionable at best, and proven to be toxic at worst.
My family ran a garbage/recycling business for 35 years. Glass is infinitely recycleable, yet brings the least amount of money to the recycler. I’d take crushed glass to our buyer at roughly 40,000 lbs a clip. What they paid us, and what it actually cost us to transport was a vastly different figure. We only handled glass out of moral pronciples, to be frankly honest. Starting in 2010, we no longer accepted glass of any kind, as it was piling up our facility, because it was worthless and cost quite a bit of money to deal with, as we were a privately owned enterprise, we had no government help with any of our programs. We closed for good in 2019, and the main loss of income for us was single stream recycling. Unless you are a government run facility, single stream recycling more often than not, ends up in the landfill. Ask me how I know. You should mention the extreme cost in overhead to run a facility like this everyday. Consider how much raw material you’d need to bring in to justify running the equipment, paying employees, insurance, registration, workman’s comp, etc. Recycling only works when you have subsidized help from the government. I like to think we did our best for well over 30 years at helping the planet live a little longer by recycling, but as the generations come and go, people are lazier and looking for the easiest most convienent way to dump their problems on someone else. Single stream recycling is killing the planet and filling landfills. Edit: Whoa! Thanks for the likes! I ask everyone to be more conscientious when recycling. Separate your recycleable material and take it to a proper facility if you can! We must do our part, we’ve already scarred the earth enough.
Yes, this seems more like it. When you examine the recycling process from start to finish, there is no way it saves energy. It sure makes ppl feel good about themselves though
I also work for recycling company, everything you say is exactly the truth. All we do with our glass anymore is collect it, and at the end of the route dump it into a garbage truck. That's all it's worth.
Thank you for your info. Now I feel hesitated to recycle glass in the future. I always tried to follow the strict rule to recycle and tried to be nice to our planet, so when I assume glass is more better than plastic, I will buy glass more. But now your video change my mind. When I was little that about 30 years ago, we really reused the glass bottle, the food factory in our town collected used drink glass bottles and washed and reused them, that was what recycling really meant to be. But at that time, we only had two or three kind of bottles to hold different flavor, that was so simple to sort and reuse. Now thousands of brands just make it impossible. Now I wish there is better way to make glass recycling more effective to go green.
I work for one of these facilities and a driver came in today; said I gotta watch the video. He was right, you did a great job! Thank you for coming out and sharing what we do with so many and spreading awareness.
Im curious about all the glass particles in the air... are there potential health issues working in there and breathing all that glass dust? Probably a dumb question and I'm sure they wear masks but still curious
@@flipnasty2296 Not a stupid question. In fact there was a thread further down that I responded to a few other people with the same question. so I have not read up on this personally but multiple people in the company I trust told me about the research they’ve done. If I remember correctly, to summarize. There are two different kinds of glass dust. One is significantly more harmful than the other when glass is crushed like momentum does it creates dust but it creates that less harmful dust. All personnel are issued OSHA approved PPE. I know the plant manager over momentum, The mask that he buys his crew are well above what is required for that dust. I believe the kind of dust that is generated from fiberglass traditionally is that more harmful cancer-causing dust. I think Jerry mentions in the video Owens Corning does something with their fiberglass to make it also not harmful for humans to inhale relatively speaking. Also most of the time machines run them selves. they are monitored by the plant staff but for the most part no one has to stand underneath those machines and breathe that dust in all day. The parts of a plant and tasks that need the most hands-on attention are usually in the least dusty sections of the plant or completely outside all together.
Millions of tons of toilet paper is flushed away every day. We should collect it for recycling. It could be used to make many items such as paper plates, drinking cups and straws. They could be dyed brown to hide any leftover impurities. So people, install a blue basket next to your toilet. Do your part for the environment.
As someone who worked with cutting glass into window panes, wear hearing protection if you're near breaking glass for a prolonged period of time (not at home, those instances are rare enough). That high pitch can be very damaging, especially because the sound is so short lived that it doesn't register as pain in the ear, akin to gunshots or firecrackers
@@podulox it's the high pitched sound of glass breaking or hitting something. Just double checked, I may have mistranslated that part, will edit accordingly
But also to call out the manufacturers of glass, plastic and metal products, who don't give us a way to send the used bottles, cans, ect, right back to them. It would only make sense. All they would have to do is collect, removed labels, sanitize and refill! How hard can it be.
@@america1st721 Please explain. I am unsure what the "this nonsense" is that you are referring to and would like you to clarify your point. Thanks in advance.
@@dokukarmagad12578 Glass can not be recycled infinitesimally like he said, the glass that gets recycled may represent 5% of all glass used. Everything ends up in land fills. The cost of recycling is too expensive. Recycling is the biggest scam going, if you don't believe me, ask your garbage collectors or go to a land fill.
In Germany the glass is put in different containers, each contain a specific color (green, white, brown ..) This glass passes similar processes like in the USA. Because of the cleanness of the glass (its pure color), new glass bottles can be produced. Recycling is worth it.
Also we have a deposit (Pfand) on many glass bottles, so they can be brought back to the company and be refilled. You save all the energy of recicling the bottle.
@@percussorhd Indeed same as here in The Netherlands, take for example a very common item as crates of beer bottles both the crate and bottles have a deposit fee, the crates are instantly used without a special process and the glass bottles if not chipped or cracked will be cleaned and refilled. The multiple time reuse is preferable over recycle.
The UK, as is usually the case, is far behind the rest of Europe. There are no deposits on bottles or cans, so many people have no incentive to recycle. You will often see people in Europe picking up litter or sorting through bins for what, to them, is free money.
@@camalex7782 basically, we're engineering everything that could potentially lower the environmental damage from the industry. Treatment plants, waste management facilities, every kind of energy plants, you name it. Like, I am sure there is at least one environmental engineer in these kinds of facilities' management boards.
@@camalex7782 Another environmental engineer here, everything will have some sort of math relevance in engineering but it definitely won't be as heavy as say Mechanical engineering. If you like maths and enviro engineering, water related disciplines would be a good choice.
I am 71 years old. I was raised on a farm. As a child, we took Coke bottles to the grocery store for a deposit. We kept and reused glass jars. There were no plastic containers or grocery bags. We didn't have a whole lot of glass jars, because we had a house garden and put up all the vegetables we needed each fall. Things have changed. 🤔
I am 49 and I can still remember when the glass soda bottles were returned, sanitized and reused. The older bottles had the ridges worn down from the process.
It looks like their face isn't covered in any dust like their hands which implies they take the mask off to talk on camera (probably because it is hard to hear on recording with ppe on)
OSHA is everywhere, and the safety officer has eyes on the back and sides of his head. I'm sure that they were doing what they need to in order to be safe. Yes, silicosis is a thing and dangerous, but there's no way everyone would be walking around with no masks if they were at risk of inhaling suspended glass dust. 🤷🏻♂️
I have worked for a plant as a contracted electrician here in Lakeland, FL that makes this very insulation. It used to be a glass bottle factory. I've mostly worked on the packaging machine that had the robotic arm in this video, which was until maybe 5 years ago was done by a human, and other general electrical systems in the plant. Its truly incredible what they do with glass and how much they use in a day. And I will say its HOT and miserably itchy up there where the furnace is. Where the packaging equipment and the rest of the plant is, the building is very clean and dust free.
What happened to the human? The entire process we just watched was automated. Seems weird that they would fire a low waged employee who packages the insulation and hire a high waged employee such as yourself to repair the packaging robot. Doesn’t make sense.
They market crushed glass as an alternative to sand in abrasive blasting. It's safer because it contains "amorphous" silica, as opposed to the "free silica" found in sand, which can cause a lung disease called silicosis.
Hey Jerry, everything seems nice in that place but as a Safety Engineer i highly recommend you and the company to use appropirate masks against the dust or small glass particals. You may not see thr dust in the air but believe me there is very dangerous dust that goes to your lungs and stays there forever.
Another benefit to glass is that even if it virually never composts it doesn't leech anything into the soil. From what I've seen even "BPA free plastic" isn't actually totally free of it it just has reduced BPA. My point is that even if glass is lazily discarded it doesn't ruin the soil, bugs, or plants of an area. Although the sharp broken pieces are a physical hazard.
So true. Glass may cause troubles of discarded incorrectly but toxicity is not one. A piece of glass in the forest may cause a fire or someone may step on a broken piece. But leave a piece of glass alone for a while to the wind and dust and it will become a nice colored pebble.
"BPA FREE!" (But trust us, we're sneaking in an as-yet-unidentified-toxic-hydrocarbon that will sicken you, your kids & grandchildren!) Such a load of bullshit how our chemical industry uses Americans as test subjects. "Just sue us later if you get sick or die."
I actually work for a company that makes them. That super bright light is projected towards a camera and color sensor. Based on what is being sorted (colored glass or opaque ceramics), that data transmits to dozens of tiny air valves that blow material to one side and the rest is unaffected.
It uses a fiber optic cable bundle with a fast strobe light to supply the bright light needed to detect the colors. Other than that the sensors are similar to the color sensor in your phone. Some of these sorters use low powered near infrared lasers similar to the type in CD rom readers to detect as ceramic and brown glass both absorb the near IR light very strongly. The laser based one has an efficiency of 98% rejection rate for unwanted glass.
I work for "the big glass company" and it's an amazing material. I really enjoyed this video because it had lots of "batch handling" equipment - something my father designed for the same "big glass company" many years ago.
@@siameseire He is not working a job for you or any "community". He works to make money so he can survive him self. That is what we are suppose to do,---you freak bum. You will need a baby sitter all your life if you don't wise up, and it will be a bad baby sitter. You already sound like a grateful communist citizen who has to praise others with a gun to the back of their heads. You---are responsible for you. Not anybody else's responsibility. You actually want to steal form the man IMO.
I am a manufacturing expert myself, but not with glass. I bet it is hot in there, like a foundry. I was amazed as a kid visiting Dearborn village, (like an industrial museum, not sure if it exists today.), in Michigan back in the 60's (with a better school than today), watching a "glass blower" do some fascinating work. I have always liked to learn how things are made,---because our freedom to do so got us out of the dirt.
Would that be the one that starts with a "C" and has headquarters near the Finger Lakes region in NY? Frankly, I have a great deal of respect for that company.
Just throw bottles into the Sahara desert and they will be grinded away by sand storms in next 50 yeras. And it doesn't take million of years to degrade a bottle. Glass even gets slowly dissolved in water , not by the pure water but by various alkalines that are naturally present in natural water .
The nice thing about glass compared to plastic, is that even if it _is_ in a landfill for longer, it has a much smaller effect on the ecosystem. Glass is basically just a rock to nature (so is metal), so having them in landfills is about as bad as having a beach made of sand (almost the same material). Glass gets crushed quite easily over time, so it wouldn't be recognizable over those timescales. Metals just get crushed back into veins in rocks, exactly like they were when we mined them out of the ground in the first place. Plastic, however, can cause serious problems for life because it leaks chemicals into the groundwater, and can easily contaminate food anywhere in the food chain. I'd highly recommend using glass instead of plastic whenever you have the choice. Glass is infinitely recyclable and is still safe even if it escapes the recycling system. Plastic can usually only be "downcycled", meaning it loses quality every time it gets used, so it has to be in lower quality forms; it is also toxic to the environment. Also, most plastic waste can't currently be recycled economically, so it just ends up in landfills anyway, even if you put it in the recycling bin.
The local refuse company touted that they were recycling glass and charging us to recycle it. Well one day I went to the local landfill to take used motor oil to their bulk oil collection tank and found that they had dumped several truckloads of glass along one edge of the pit. We have an Owens Corning plant two hours away. I called the refuse company and they said the glass market had slumped and it wasn't worth it to haul; but we still get charged for them to pick it up; well I no longer recycle glass containers as I only have one to three containers a month, too many containers have gone to plastic, pain to wash and keep track of the glass and they only pick it up on the second tuesday of the week in a separate bin. Too many containers have gone to plastic that they won't take in the recycle bin either, but they make sure to bill us as if they recycle everything. I saw somewhere that a local government agency made the manufacturers put in place a drop off site to recycle everything they produce; people have to sort it themselves, but they say more stuff gets recycled that way. Another wasteful byproduct is construction waste. Contractors lump everything into their trucks and dump trailers and launch it into the landfill. We have a recycling plant that grind's up all yard/tree waste and would recycle all nearly all lumber that the contractors just pitch into the landfill. I don't blame them as time is money and they get charged for the load(s) no matter how much effort they put into it. The local habitat for humanity site would take all the lumber and if nothing else they cut it up for heating wood and sell it if they cannot resell it. The recycling system in the United States is broken and it starts with the manufacturers;glass containers are now plastic in a lot of cases.
@@funnyfarm5555 A definite hard solve. Recycling isn't lucrative so business that have nothing to gain or lose (government regulations)just dump which is cheaper than paying labor to be responsible. Just like seeing some roadside dump that somebody who decided it was somebody else problem. I'd think at least if the materials were separated into their own disposal site then one might have a 1 stop shop if a use materializes some time later
That powdered glass is ALSO sprayed on wet paint lines on highways and roads when the lines are repainted because it makes that lines on the road very VERY REFLECTIVE. They been doing that for years now and it works very well to help see how to drive when its foggy.
Excellent Video. The quality of many such independent RUclips creators not only rivals but surpasses those old PBS and BBC documentaries. This is top notch! 👍👍👍👍
The best way to recycle glass is still to reuse it though, not applicable in all situations but breweries washing and refilling bottles sent back from bars for example is clearly the most ecological way to dispose of used glass bottles.
Back in the day we would take our old coke and Pepsi bottles back to the grocery store. We'd get a little money and the store would send them back to be reused.
@Ed Blanchard Go visit any supermarket in Germany and ALL the bottles are recyclable and are recycled by the case: returned whole, washed and refilled. No smashing. No mixing. No million dollar "optical laser color sorting machines" or other costly baloney. Bottle cost: $0.17. Recycling cost/bottle: $0.34 Apparently one can still manufacture "thick-walled" glass bottles today! The USA is about the dumbest place to formulate sound recycling policy.
Easy way to recycle stuff is to put a high deposit on stuff like cups and have them returned to get the deposit back. $2.5 sounds good. That would incentivize the hell out of people to return this stuff. Homeless people no longer begging on streets aswell coz they can just return cups from lazy people who just throw this in bins.
When I was young (50 plus years ago) we collected glass and sold it to the glass factory in town. We were paid by the pound with mixed glass being the cheapest but if you separated the glass by color you got more depending on the color with depression glass being the highest if it was pure depression glass. I paid for boy scout camp doing this.
@@shoraz Depression glass is a dark blue glass that was made back in the great depression that had a slight amount of uranium in it which made it glow under certain light but not enough to harm you. It is highly prized by some glass producers and glass blowers due to that fact.
I also collected glass pop bottles way back in the day (about 40 years ago) before they started making them out of plastic. They had to be in good shape though because I think they just cleaned them and reused them. I would bring them to the convenience store where they gave 10 cents per bottle. I would usually get 20 jujubes for 10 cents (half a cent each) and save the rest.
It's wild to me that we don't recycle all glass. It's one of the few materials we can recycle without extreme struggle (unlike plastic) yet we still throw tons of it into landfills every year. My town didn't offer any recycling services until about 10 years ago. That means for 20 years all glass and scrap metal I produced while living here was thrown in a landfill.
The problem is that if there isn't a local industry to use the glass it's not economical to be transporting it across the country to somewhere where it will be used; so households recycle it but it may just be dumped into landfill on the quiet.
Glass is mostly silicon, the 2nd most abundant element in Earth's crust after oxygen, at 27.7%. Glass going into landfill is just silicon returning to where it came from. The only valuable thing lost is energy. Given, that amount of wasted energy in *not* insignificant. From an environmental view, wasted glass is not even an issue for the Earth or wildlife, *unlike PLASTIC* is.
@@PushyPawn thats like saying plastics is mostly just carbon and hydrogen, so not really any different than literally anything plant based It's not only the atoms that a material is made from, but also the constellation and binding properties they have, etc (another example: Computer chip wafers are pure silicon, yet you dont just throw them away into sand)
@@Thermalions Correct. My local (Regional) govt, of which I was a councilor for 8 years, could not find any party to take the glass (free). After stock piling it for 3 years we just gave up and it went into the landfill.
Ìn the netherlands most glass needs to be sorted by color. taking out one of the steps. And most of the beers in glass that are used a lot, most of them are standardized. We put some down payment on the bottles and then when you return it to get it back. That reduces it all to just taking off the old labels and sanatize them. and then they get reused.
I did engineering at university, and one of my placements was in a glass manufacturing company… I worked in the lab, and because of this our duties involve everything from the arrival of raw materials to the dispatch of glass bottles the upkeep of furnaces, cooling systems, and the actual glass blowing machines. It was the most diverse and interesting time of my life.
I am in the electronics recycling industry and while very unique in many ways, they share fundamentally similar recycling technologies, downstream recycling companies, and compliance obligations. We take for granted how difficult, expensive, but worthwhile recycling is. Recycling is expensive because it creates industries and jobs! Every pound of recovered materials lowers our carbon footprint while providing raw materials for the manufacturing companies of the world. There's still a lot of important work to be done to align sustainability programs with programs that truly "close the loop," it is heartening to see more people become aware of how *cool* recycling can be *because* of it's challenges.
I worked in one of Owens Corning's competitors insulation plant for a while. They were making standard white insulation batts (paperless batts, papered batts and foil backed batts), brown batts (made with eco-friendly binders) and blowing wool. The whole process is very interesting.
I sat next to a R&D guy from JM on a flight back from Germany... I was visiting our filter media supplier and just about everyone in the industry uses JM for their glass fiber. Pure luck I sat next to that guy. I think there is a lot more quality control for chopped fiber but it's all a similar process.
Worked summers while in college at an insulation plant on the 'hot end'. I still chuckle at them allowing an 18 year old kid to drive a massive front end loader through a "it barely fits tunnel" to dump refuse glass into huge glass piles. fun times...
In the early 80's I had a customer in the Chicago area, Viracon Glass. There was a concrete pad with a Cat bulldozer than ran over broken or imperfect tempered glass. At that time tempered glass couldn't be reused in glass making. The broken tempered glass was then put through a crusher, the resultant powder was sold to paint companies that manufactured highway reflective paint. At night, the headlights bounced off the crushed glass particles in the paint - center lines, lane markers, etc., - so drivers could see the roadway.
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That is way cool. I know Owens Corning does not use tempered glass because of the extremely high temperatures required to melt it. Mirror, safety, and tempered glasses are harder to recycle for that reason.
@@sarah2.017 or aluminum. The mirrors we used in the monster computers for the Navy, back in the day (those screens the sailor sat in front of and which went "blip, blip, blip," showing the location of the computer and other floaters around it) relied on the aluminum because it didn't tarnish as quickly as silver. Because the actual plated surface (silver or aluminum) is used, to avoid a thing called parallax (see note), the surface cannot be sealed (e.g., painted) to seal it from oxygen that causes it to oxidize. NOTE: Hold your finger on a mirror and the gap between it and the reflection is what is referred to as parallax), it
The narrator has a great voice. Wonderful diction. So easy to understand, even for one with hearing loss. Keeps his voice in range best for hearing, unlike many speakers today who keep dropping their voices or speak in staccato sentences. Thanks!
Hey Jerry, here in The Netherlands, garbage export (out of the EU) or garbage landfill are illegal. What about that ..... the world of garbage is fully the world of recycling. Buy a gadget, there is a fee added to assist in paying for recycling the debris of that type of gadget (car, calculator, whatever technical thing). Township or county garbage bins have all been replaced - by smaller ones. Pick up typically: once every two weeks. What? But wait: you can get fined if recycables are in the garbage too. So there are extra bins: plastic (rinsed!), paper, kitchen and garden greens - all beverage cans and bottles have deposits and points of sales must take them in, return deposit (or plastic bin). Glass is at any supermarket, same with batteries. Then there is the county depot: mattresses, gadgets, metals, yard-greens, wood, reusable, clothing, diapers, construction materials like brick and concrete, paint and anything chemical or medicinal, plate glass, oiled woods, on and on. This is drive through. All not sorted wasted is incinerated - the heat is used to heat neighborhoods or for industry, the ashes are mixed into street bricks. Government just uses threat of regulation to force lines of business to organize ways of working, so technically, there is almost no regulation - except that landfill or garbage export are illegal. Where: the Netherlands, the world's most densely populated nation (except city states). Ah, those windmills! The ancient ones already were pumps to pump water out of land below sea level, just needed more land!
First I was astonished that they mix all glass. Here in Sweden we have to sort into uncolored and colored glass. Here it seems as they are able to sort every kind of glass piece dependent upon the color. What we saw, was one line of recycling, from mixed glass to clear glass to insulation, but it would be nice to see the other lines as well, like how different glass make up new bottles.
As not everyone is in the way for seperating or an ignorant, thecompsnies who process the glass for firther use have always to controll and separate it again, even when everyone separates it correct.
In finland coloured glass goes to landfills. Only clear packaging glass is recycled. Windows and drinking glass are also thrown into landfills because they're made of different glass
@@eetuthereindeer6671Very true, some locations simply aren’t equipped to handle a particular input like grease or colorant. Though it does confuse me that Germany with its high-population density wouldn’t have an issue like that solved..
@@peterdarr383 They aren't talking about the fibers, the problematic part is the glass dust he could inhale, like from the glass powder he dips his hands in, or even before as the machines are sorting out and grinding the glass, dust obviously gets created all around.
@@daviddou1408 Perhaps some more research would have been warranted, if you had done your own. Fact check:- Asbestos is not made of glass Asbestos is a naturally occurring mineral deposit Glass wool is not a naturally occurring mineral deposit, or asbestos The IARC considers glass wool, "not be classifiable as to their carcinogenicity to humans" However, the NTP has "classified certain glasswool fibers (inhalable fibers that are *biopersistent* in the respiratory system) as reasonably anticipated to be human carcinogens" You are annoying Therefore we can only dismiss your comment in its entirety. *Warning* The state of California contains chemicals known to the state of California to cause cancer
Also for those who are interested in glass, even though glass lasts for millions of years in the environment. It’s not really much of a problem because animals won’t eat it, sunlight doesn’t break it down whereas the sun makes micro plastics (plastic exposed to the sun) it’s not harmful if you ingest it micro amounts, it doesn’t cause cancer and it comes from a beautiful natural thing called sand.
Glass basically gets ground down to sand over natural process of erosion. like volcanic glass it crunches it's self to small sharp pieces that get sanded down over time and make very pretty pebbles, by the way. There was a river/lake here where some moron crashed a truck full of glass bottles to be reprocessed. And since it was the Soviet Union nobody cared to get the glass bottles out. Some people scavenged, kids went there to break the glass bottles because... bored kids do that. 60 years later you can still find the glass pieces in the riverbed but in certain parts where the stream is swift they get knocked around by rocks, smoothing them out into semi transparent, emerald or brownish looking pieces of stone. I have a few at home but the place where you can get them isn't really safe because it was claimed by a hobo tent.
plastic is natural they are made of same building block as sugar and oil which is polymerised and become solid. Some component is too similar to our own hormone (ie: BPA) and had to banned from plastic. A lot of animals tries to eat it but can't digest it except for some bacteria. Even plant's cellulose and plant oil can be converted into plastic but research is discouraged because bioplastic compete with food production. Plastic is organic but glass is not.
@@xponen Plastic is not present or produced by nature. It is therefore by definition not 'natural'. I don't even know what point you're trying to make but your premise is wrong.
@@m0rthaus shockingly nature produce plastic but it is called "resin" (the solid clear material that encase pre-historic insects, as featured in the movie Jurassic Park).
So thankful to actually see how non glass (labels, plastic, bottle caps)are separated from glass. I wash all glass and separate the cap or lid prior to putting it in the recycle bin. It just made sense to me to do that. But i always wondered about labels. Thank you for the video!!
The water and energy you use to clean the individual glass is probably more than what they use in the factory. I remember when jars and bottles were actually collected to be reused. Back then it was proper to wash them. We used to just add them to the dishes.
@@nelus7276 I also think is wasteful to wash them yourself, but this video doesn't show what they do with the dirty glass, probably it goes with the labels at high temp? I know that some of mine are quite dirty with food stuck inside and i don't know if to send them to recycle or not, since i didn't wash them in time now will take a lot of time and water.
Used to have to remove labels and glue in 76. Took ford f250 longbed full. Took months. Made $76. Did it 2x more, then got a job at Dryers ice cream. Paid more, and tasted better to an 10 year old.
It's more energy efficient to just bin without washing, Why? Not everyone cleans their bottles So your clean bottles get mixed with dirty bottles so theres no energy saving Infact you have needless wasted water to clean the bottle Not criticising just saying. Before plastic became the wonder storage container it is now, most fuild containers were glass Things like fizzy pop, milk, liquid medicine and there were pop bottles you can get a refund on after returning the bottles Yes Plastic packaging is far more cheaper to produce but considering the health implications on wild life, humans and water ways from micro plastics And the huge sums spent trying to clear plastic from water ways and ocean Is plastic actually cheaper than Glass. Perhaps at the start of the chain but include the cost of cleaning up the waste what does plastic cost us We should go back to glass containers , The convenience of Plastics is having a huge impact on life on earth
@@javeedsultan8484 I 100% agree to going back to glass. As a matter of fact, i really dislike all the plastic and styrofoam used in packaging. I once lived abroad and loved buying dry goods in the quantities I needed only, packaged in brown paper bags. Milk was delivered by the farmer and he poured the amount you wanted into your own container. Such practical and eco friendly living. I miss those days. The reason i rinse my recycables has to do with hygiene more than anything. Our city picks them up every 15 days and food ccntainers start to smell and attract flies, as well as make a mess inside the bin. I use minimal water, it is so very expensivve here that I am careful. Thank you for taking time to reply to my post. Your reflection was well thought out and wise. Be well!!
The fact that someone invented that sorting machine using compressed air is the most amazing part. Seems like it would n impossible to sort, but someone solved it....
@@pop_popich its probably an insanely complicated and insanely expensive piece of equipment. Luckily for the maintenance guys, they are probably well compensated and just hang around until something needs fixing.
I don't have enough information about it so I will wait for Huggbees' version. But such a machine in that environment would be probably last straw for me (esp. after some years of its lifespan). It surely is impressive.
In the 1950's, we had a perfect recycling system; it was called deposit bottles. The producers took back the bottles, cleaned them, and refilled them. Worked great, until the glass corporations pushed for non returnable bottles, and lobbied until they got them. Then it all failed, and now we have an entire plastic island floating in the oceans.
Same in Australia - soda bottles and wine bottles were cleaned and refilled - we had then a 6d deposit (1950's) - which would be about 75¢ (Australian) now. 4 bottles would then buy me a meat pie. Bottle washing employed folks who would have had difficulty in getting a job, and gave them a salary and a position in society. Now they are on benefits (tax pater funded). I think, given our current world situation, that using un recyclable glass to produce thermal (house) insulation is the next best thing. Even better would be to extend the re-useables to include standardised jars and other containers - the German model. Plus a significant deposit (refundable with your next purchase).
We still have that here in Chile, mostly for soda, with both refundable glass and plastic bottles. Some people seem to prefer disposables though for practical reasons (or lazyness), despite the small extra cost.
that campaign was mainly initiated by Coca Cola, so if you don't agree with these kind of practices, you know what to do or what to avoid. The officially have a green agenda (iirc until 2035) which is already today unrealistic to meet. So don't care about the environment for decades and have not the slightest intention to change as well
I worked in that Owens Corning factory about 10 years ago. We were doing a switch gear change out. Pretty cool to see more of the process. Those fibers were EVERYWHERE in the factory. It was nice to vacuum it all off at the end of the day. 😂
I’ve heard many municipalities stopped collecting glass for recycling due to expense. This is encouraging though. Glad to see recycled glass is being put to good use. I’ll make sure to keep recycling it versus throwing it in the trash.
Decades ago when I was working in a recycling yard on a military base, we would hand sort the glass by color ourselves. Brown, Green, Clear and mixed/other. I believe we got paid more for the sorted stuff (money went into Rec fund). We also sorted out the different plastics, paper and metals.
As a Utah resident its nice to see where my recycled glass goes. Its crazy to think how much recycling helps. Recycling glass makes new products and also makes/employs jobs!
It is interesting to me to see how far glass recycling has come in the past forty years or so. Way back in the day we had to separate it by color before they would accept it. I worked several summers at a big glass factory back in the seventies. My union income for three months would pay for most of my out-of-state college tuition and room and board for the year. My dad worked in the industry for over forty years. It is a shame that plastics killed off most of that industry.
The kicker is that plastics seem to not be handled as well and recycled as effectively as its predecessors glass and tin. Wish we'd go back or just learn how to do more with plastics within the U.S. I heard only a small percentage of plastics actually make it to recycling facilities.
My in-laws were big stucco siding contractors. They would use glass as filler in their stucco for decades . Still looks like the day they put it on 50 years ago … we really don’t appreciate glass products enough .
@@sitnstill4now my town doesnt even give residents a recycling bin, I'm sure many others are the same where our government doesn't give a shit about recycling
Approved. I am seeing where you have sought and crafted the elements to have such sweet resolutions in energy and environmental stability. It is beautiful.
Fun fact: molten glass also absorbs microwave radiation, unlike solid glass. So you can’t melt glass in a microwave, but if you melt a bit of it with a torch, and then place it in the microwave, that part will continue to heat up and start melting the surrounding area.
It's super nice that they gave you such an in-depth look into their facility, even letting you attach cameras to machinery, opening it up and stopping it for you to explain.
@@hashslingingslasher760 no, he isn't. IF he was working there for years, he would. For recording one video, it basically isn't a problem. The sound protection though, is a serious problem,ö. As it only needs one exposion to loud sounds to get a permanent hearing problem. But he might have when not in picture or have in ear plugs.
Hi Zack, I can think of three items I'd like to see being recycled: 1. Multilayered poly packs of consumables 2. Batteries, especially EV batteries 3. Nuclear waste from nuclear plants
No.3 is not needed because it was all radioactive metal before it went in the reactor. And just got converted to other radioactive metals afterwards. Just all in one place. Just bury it out of reach, or wait until we find a way to use those products again in another type of reactor. And nuclear plants don't pump out nuclear waste everyday. It's just a bunch of rods that need to be replaced once in a lifetime or so.
3 Nuclear waste may be used as a weapond or worse , we know because of certain boy scout that such info should be clasified and only available to proper organizations
3. You can “recycle” it into weapons-grade plutonium, which can either be reused as fuel, or put into nukes. Of course Daddy USA only wants nukes for himself so he bans the tech from other contries.
As a huge fan of the serie "How it's made" i vote for Zach to make a serie on any renewable stuff/recycleable item you can imagine, very interresting and educational. greetings from france !!!!!
@@FJB2020 There are some flops. But having watched every episode of the original show, I still find some joy winding down to a couple videos back to back every once in a while. Definitely need a few days between sessions. ZeFrank is hilariously brilliant as well, but not binge worthy either. That's where Zack, Cody, Nigel, etc. come in.
@@Chrislk1986 Yeah I grew up on How it's Made and just recently started watching it again with my kids.. I haven't watched the 'Hows it Actually Made' with them lol.. Not kid friendly, but yes there are some funny ones in there.. Actually funny story, but I was watching so many How It's Made's that YT auto played a Huggbees version and I was about half way through it and thought.. What in the hell is this lol...
I was sent to a program in high school called 'VOP" (Vocational options program) and they sent us to a recycling place to work for a day. They asked who wanted to break up the glass, and let's just say, I volunteered instantly. Best work day of my life
I've been a stained glass artist for 30 years, and I've always sold my scrap glass on eBay and Etsy.. There are a lot of artists out there who either use it for Mosaic or melt it down. I have even fused plate class with spectacular results! I sell my scrap in 15 lb Lots which fills an entire USPS medium flat-rate priority box.
the real question is what percentage of bottles collected for recycling actually make it to be recycled at a place like this as opposed to just being thrown out because it is too costly to take it to the nearest place
What I read years ago here in central Florida, is that it was more expensive to transport the glass to a recycling facility than the money the local gov't made from recycling it, so they stopped, and just crushed it instead.
There’s a company down in Louisiana that was started by two college friends over a glass of wine. They grind the glass down into different sizes and depending on the size is how it is determined for the use it will serve. One size is used for costal restoration because it is similar in size to sand. Others are used in “sand bags” instead of taking sand from beaches or the coast line.
I saw that story on them. I think it said they give away the sandbags for free too. Sorry I don't remember their names. But it was really cool what they do.
@@danlux4954 Not sure if you’re talking abt the company I was. But the company I’m talking about uses recycled glass to make sandbags for hurricanes, bad weather, etc. They also use the glass that is on the more finer side and put them in biodegradable bags and use them along the coast line of Louisiana to restore the receding coast line. The do other things with the crushed glass but I can’t remember what all else they do. I’ve linked their video in a reply above if you’d like to watch it.
some places require sorting the glass by colours beforehand, which allows purer use of especially white glass, which needs quite a high purity to be used for similar usage again. I think it depends very much on where you are living and recycling the glass.
In Germany we have a bin for glass with 3 separate compartments for green, brown and white glass. I guess it makes sorting them out later easier and saves a bit of energy and time.
@@Methadras Blue glass is uncommon in Germany. Throwing it into the bin for green is the answer for this "once in a year" question. The slightly blue bottles are mostly reuseble bottles - deposit tabs. The companies take them back, wash and refill them.
Safety warning: Always wear sealed edge safety goggles, filter masks and gloves when working around glass crushers. Him just walking in there without any of that is an OSHA nightmare.
Right?! WTF is going on there, nobody wears even masks and googles, when literally a glass dust flying around, but even driver in a loader sits like nothing is happening
@@llMarvelous 9:28 in the vid is something that realy dosnt make sense for me in. it says that its safe to inhale, and with some googling around i found " often fatal lung disease silicosis can occur from chronic inhalation of silica dust" and well glass is silica dust. So i think there is a bit where the host is not truthful.
Household waste recycling in Europe is crazy good now, the large factories are so efficient that they look to find more trash than there is available in their area. Vision AI processing makes sorting possible at profitable scale.
@@josephsolowyk7697 Fundamentally, nothing, its pretty much as with all things, the dosage is important. Co2 is really good at absorbing Infrared Radiation, therefore it captures some of the light that would otherwis be radiated into space and radiates it back to the surface, warming the earth. This allows earth to be nice and toasty and not an icy hellhole. On the other end of the spectrum, too much of it turns earth into an oven, similar to venus. Obviously this is a gradual change, however most species, including us, are adapted to the current temperature. Increasing Co2 and therefore the temperature will cause some number of species to be extinct, how many is obviously up for debate, however the physical aspects are certain. In fact co2 and co being so good at absorbing infrared light is how "smoke" detectors work, you shine the light through the air and measure if it reaches the detector, if most of it is absorbed by the "air" that indicates a fire, no smoke necessary, just absorption of the light.
The biggest potential energy savings from glass comes from a return for deposit system, where the glass containers are reused. Generally speaking, the past sucks, but in terms of systems, the old system of return for deposit beats recycling hands down.
While that was the case when I was a kid for glass soda bottles, those bottles were replaced with plastic bottles. To implement a system like that for all the other glass bottles and jars would be a logistical nightmare.
Correct the current model just pushes to costs onto the consumer, reuse will always beat out recycle energy wise. Generally speaking the past (in my lifetime) sucked considerably less for your average first worlder than today.
@@Elhardt Humans managed to solve that logistical nightmare 100 years ago without computers. The problem is that making a new plastic bottle is still cheaper than collecting and processing a used glass bottle. If businesses have to spend a single extra penny per bottle to use glass, they will choose plastic instead.
One thing you have to consider was also in years past that just about every small to medium sized city had a local bottler from one or more of the major soda brands, and outside of the big national beer brands like bud and miller and such, alot of the beer came from small regional breweries. Because of this, refilling wasn't an issue because transportation of the empty bottles was mostly local or regional. Even my small city of about 40K in the 1980s when I was young still had coke, Pepsi, and 7up bottlers locally, but those are all long gone now.
Right off I am glad to find out that leaving a cap on a bottle when it's recycled isn't a huge problem. I have been doing that in a feeble attempt to avoid attracting bugs to my recycling bins.
Zack has an amazing narration voice just like Mike Rowe. I'd love for him to take on a Dirty Jobs style show, or a How it's Made reboot but with a visible and present narrator instead.
If Utah has a state funded factory tours show, for factories in the state, that could be neat and probably easier for him to get on than how its made. I know PA has one, but idk if Utah does.
I was working a lot with fiberglass in attics and assumed, like many, that the itching would translate to lung issues. I asked my friend the respiratory therapist. He said that in training they studied many lung diseases including silicosis, asbestosis, even talc can cause lung disease. But there was never any discussion of fiberglass in his training because, as common as it is, people don't get lung disease from it. Not seen. More dangerous to work with fine sand or clay. It's not always what you think.
silicosis basicly is caused by glas and or its components. Just like asbestos, it's not dangerous until pulverized to (very) small particles. e.g. breaking/ drilling/ sawing dust. In the lab we used small glas beats / pulver to destroy cells "instantly" with a shaker to prevent them from changing their biochemistry. (other ways of killing cells create stress biochemistry) The preparation is done in a fume hood due to the dangers of non-biodegradable dust.
@@steven-jellemeijer8412 Silicosis is a long-term lung disease caused by inhaling large amounts of crystalline silica dust. As was mentioned in these comments. Crystailline silica dust is distinct from the form in fiberglass insulation. It is not found to be carcinogenic, though some alarmists might prefer to go with "common sense" over studies or the older rulings that assumed as much. "The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) issued a press release in 2001 that summarized their re-evaluation of an earlier 1988 assessment. They looked at man-made vitreous fibers used for insulation, such as fiberglass, and stated, "Epidemiologic studies published during the 15 years since the previous IARC Monographs review of these fibres in 1988 provide no evidence of increased risks of lung cancer or of mesothelioma (cancer of the lining of the body cavities) from occupational exposures during manufacture of these materials, and inadequate evidence overall of any cancer risk."[1,2] The result of this investigation was to remove glass, rock and slag wool fibers from its list of substances “possibly carcinogenic to humans."
@@ceeweedsl I noticed my reply was removed or blocked? probably due to linking to articles like: Measurement of Lung Cancer Tumor Markers in a Glass Wool Company Workers Exposed to Respirable Synthetic Vitreous Fiber and Dust. That an agency considers something is safe enough to work with under safety conditions has no bearing on health. it only says you wont be liable. kind a like some companies get permits to pollute. e.g I consider rockwool and other insulations safe when they are in place and sealed off. but working with the products production, placement and demolition probably has health concerns.
@@steven-jellemeijer8412 Perhaps it's not yet clear whether fiberglass really does cause problems in humans on any scale compared to those working with clay or other fine mineral sand or other materials known to cause silicosis. Or the cancer from smoking. Obviously there is a perception that if it's itchy to the skin it must be destroying the lungs. And any dust is an irritant in any case. But one would prefer to really know or at least be able to treat the material with appropriate precaucion. For me, a somewhat health cautious person, I have two "data points": 1) the places where fiberglass insulation (not all glass) has been DElisted from lists of dangerous materials - and then others where it is simply cleared from the start. 2) That, combined with the clear message that it's a non-issue, coming from my own friend and trained respiratory therapist, I am personally satisfied to continue working with it on occasion without a mask. Since he has spent half a lifetime caring for people with respiratory issues yet seen none from FG insulation, I believe him. But that is not evidence that you should believe me. Better safe than sorry ! So if someone feels unsafe or is convinced by a different safety profile they have seen, then they should act accordingly. Wear a mask or hire somebody else (more like me!) to work with the potentially dangerous material.
@@ceeweedsl makes sense. I mean. we use gasoline . the fumes are not healthy. but as long we fill up your car or lawnmower there are most likely no long term issues. Bodies can handle a lot. it is the dose that makes the poison. and even then its chance.
What struck me the most is the lack of safety measures; like I'd have imagined the air gets thick with small glass particles that can be harmful to your lungs
Very cringe video. I worked with glass and after breathing some glass dust it took me 2 years to recover. I couldn't even sleep because my lungs were so damaged. That guy has zero idea what he's doing.
@@jamesjonnes Are you sure that was clean glass? Glass is basically just sand, you breathe in plenty of "glass dust" by just lying down on the beach on a windy day, the stuff is everywhere in the atmosphere. In fact "glass dust" (silicon dioxide) isn't just widely used in food and cosmetics, it's actually naturally occurring in plants like rice. Most likely you had a reaction to the materials on the label or cap.
As someone who worked at a glass container factory growing up I can say that a lot of glass isn't always wanted anymore, if a factory has a certain type of glass they specialize in they reject other types. My factory only did clear glass bottles from Seagrams bottles to Frank's red hot
@@brandona.deimel5155 It's still quite profitable to recycle such glass, so they'd have a deal set up with a company that would take their mixed colour glass and reprocess it.
@@paulwittkamp4678 no, we did clear glass though, used to have another tank for green glass a long time ago, switch to brown, then became a secondary clear tank.
Another growing use for recycled glass is as a road base. Unfortunately, glass is heavy and adds to shipping costs for products and afterwards. Last I heard, the recycled glass costs more than new glass.
@@matthewpaine6908 not sure about that. It depends from area to area. Mining, logistics, taxes, and waste contaminations in the ore make huge price differentiation. If there are mines near - new glass is cheaper, if not - recycled is cheaper.
@@Олексій-г1в Reminds me of that old movie "The gods must be crazy". If you lack the ability to produce glass a single recycled glass bottle becomes very valuable.
@@kyleinwisc There are a lot of factors that contributed to price. It depend on the area. After all glass bottles have a deposit, which increases cost. They have to be shipped, sorted, cleaned and processed. This all cost, time, money, man power and energy. Certain glass products need to be more pure than others, which requires more sorting, more cleaning, more processing, more energy. The glass used in fiberglass insulation doesn't need to be very pure, so cost of using recycled glass is low. Glass used in optics needs to be very pure, so the cost of using recycled glass is much higher.
This is The US you are talking about. It's a nation of knuckleheads who prioritize convenience over anything else. They love getting stuff and consuming it and throwing away the packaging without a care in the world. Asking them to carry bottles to the store for soda or wine is preposterous.
@NattieChristopher Reuse of coca cola, pepsi, beer bottles is still commonplace in less developed countries. Like in UK there is a fee when you purchase the beer or coke that you get back upon the surrender of the empty. The greatest use for mixed color glass is to reduce it to very small shards and mix it one small part into Portland Cement road building aggregate. It's romboidal shape gives a boost to sharp sand. Plastic single use bottles clog up storm drains, area real mess, and don't degrade.
FYI: While recycling glass makes a whole lot of sense it's, unfortunately, becoming a thing of the past. Here in Northern Virginia glass is NO LONGER recycled. Our waste management company no longer collects glass separately and no longer processes glass in a recycling plant. They primarily state that it is no longer financially feasible to recycle glass. As your video showed it takes a specific process to recycle glass and that apparently is an expensive business proposition, especially the separation or sorting phase. It's my understanding that not many of these recycling plants exist in my area and they are slowly disappearing across the USA as they go out of business. From what I have researched most of the glass is just placed in the normal landfill or is shipped off to the west coast and then sold and shipped to China. However, recently China is no longer purchasing glass from us so we are now shipping it to other Asian countries like Thailand and Malaysia. Apparently, it's not COST effective here in the USA to recycle glass so it's being shipped overseas. Your Utah plant may be one of the last plants to still be recycling glass, but I suspect it's barely holding on and is becoming less and less profitable to run.
This is a market failure, and a failure of state action, both now and in our past. As mentioned in another comment, there is an overall revenue that exceeds costs here once externalities are factored in. In addition, the main reason for this failure in the United States are two-fold: low rates of glass recycling, and single-stream recycling. Single stream recycling is less expensive internally than muilti-stream, and requires less education of US residents, but in a comprehensive recycling system results in a far more expensive process. We have low rates of glass recycling because the United States has failed to make it easy and more affordable to recycle glass. In Europe, it is more expensive to trash glass than recycle it, creating space and incentive for recycling organizations/firms to maximize efficiency as there is much more glass to recycle, allowing for more innovation as there is effectively a larger market. Many European countries have a recycling rate around 75%, and countries such as Sweden, Belgium and Slovenia have rates around 95%. Europe led this effort in the public sectors of these countries, knowing that having strong recycling practices would be worth it in the long run, and devising systems up-front for multi-stream recycling to make things efficient in the long run. As a result, basically everyone in Europe is familiar with good recycling practices due to having had it for decades. This has led to a system that is efficient, eco-friendly, and profitable. In America, we largely let the private sector lead, which actually led to less efficient systems, especially as we tried to dumb things down for the average resident and go with a single stream system.
What you're are saying has some truths. Curbside glass recycling doesn't make much sense in most places. It's messy. Glass is sharp. Glass is heavy. Drop a load and you've got a problem. And yes, sorting can be problematic with older equipment. There is less and less CURBSIDE glass pickup going on in the US, that's for sure. Where I'm at does a monthly pickup, which is silly. What they do in place of that is drop-off sites with large containers that get picked up once or twice a week, along with drop-off at trash/recycling transfer stations. I'm not entirely sure where the glass goes from there, but even the 6 yard containers for a small city would be full in a week (granted, military town where people love their cheap beer in glass containers). So there's still a market for it, but to cut costs, its putting the responsibility all on the person recycling, which is OK. Keeps less waste out of the recycling stream when its done this way, honestly. We all saw that purple alarm clock bouncing around when the glass was going into the pulverizer, which is trash. Which is what you find a lot of in curbside recycle--Straight trash. Call it what you want--Laziness, ignorance, carelessness...but its common and will be ongoing until recyclers have cans with built-in cameras that monitor your contents 24/7. lol
This video put me in the same delightful mood that watching “picture picture” videos on Mr. Rodgers did when I was a young child in the 70’s! Picture picture always showed how things (like crayons, etc.) we’re made. I had the same reaction then as I do now… “More please!” You have a gift for making tours interesting, understandable and fun!
I'd love to see two videos: One covering electronics recycling, and the other on plastics... I know some can be recycled and some can't, so it'd be interesting to see how they can be sorted and recycled.
This type of content should be mandatory in all schools. It's not hippy skippy, it's about understanding engineering and how the world works as well as how to keep the world working.
If you want to show something useful in schools, what about the future graves of all the people that are working there, who are breathing in glass dust every day? In 10 years they're all going to have lung cancer.
*Fascinating process my family has been recycling cans and glass for years now after seeing what becomes of the glass bottles my family was impressed thank you Jerry for taking your valuable time to explore such topic.*
The good thing about glass is that even of it does break down to micro particles in the environment, these particles are not as hazardous as micro plastics. We should return back to using glass bottles vs plastic. Yes they can break and are heavier, but overall better for the environment and were used for hundreds of years before plastic become ubiquitous.
You should be wearing a dust filter/ collector respirator to protect your lungs. The finished product might not hurt you, but the process up till then definitely will. Other than that, a great video.
I remember when the milkman delivered milk in glass bottles and after drinking the milk we put the empties out for him to pick up on the next delivery. The empty bottles were then cleaned thoroughly before refilling for the next customer. A much more environmentaly process and much more efficient.
Used to reuse soda and beer bottles , but recycled wine and liquer bottles. now most are plastic or aluminum, and much more wasteful of energy and materials.
With new ultra light plastic bottles, manufacture and shipping requires less energy. those old style refillable bottles were half the weight of the product. One truck can now deliver what used to take two trucks. That alone debunks your theory. But wait! There's more! Cleaning and sanitizing a glass bottle uses more energy than making a new plastic bottle. One more point. All these recycling schemes rely on people donating empty bottles and in some cases going so far as to deliver them to a collection point. None of which is ever counted when calculating recyclings carbon footprint.
@@bobhart677 plus, the fresh plastic has a special vitamin chemical that uses patented slow release technology to infuse the milk , the vitamin chemical , or vitamin C if you will, mimics hormones so closely that your body can't differentiate between the two! No more worrying if the boys are getting enough estrogen now, just make sure they have 3 vitiman C packed glasses a day and before you know it, little mikey will be zipping up his dress on his own , and Stevie will be at the top of the volleyball team ! Don't think we forgot the girls, with a hearty helping of extra vitamin C twice a day, they' ll be seniors before they finish 4th grade !! That's fantastic!!
CUT!!!
( Kids in the commercial all began groaning and clutching their stomachs while rolling on the floor)
@@dont.ripfuller6587 If you think protecting people from mystery chemicals doing weird things is more important than using scarce resources wisely. Well, that's your right.
@@bobhart677 But wait! Turns out many plastics disrupt hormones and the endocrine system - leading to the new pandemic of 8 year olds on their period, infertility, and a host of other health problems. Each year, we find out plastics aren't as safe as we once thought. Black plastic (found in your coffee makers and tv dinner trays) are likely the next to be banned as toxic-as-****. Glass is inert. Safe. Plastic is questionable at best, and proven to be toxic at worst.
My family ran a garbage/recycling business for 35 years. Glass is infinitely recycleable, yet brings the least amount of money to the recycler. I’d take crushed glass to our buyer at roughly 40,000 lbs a clip. What they paid us, and what it actually cost us to transport was a vastly different figure. We only handled glass out of moral pronciples, to be frankly honest. Starting in 2010, we no longer accepted glass of any kind, as it was piling up our facility, because it was worthless and cost quite a bit of money to deal with, as we were a privately owned enterprise, we had no government help with any of our programs. We closed for good in 2019, and the main loss of income for us was single stream recycling. Unless you are a government run facility, single stream recycling more often than not, ends up in the landfill. Ask me how I know. You should mention the extreme cost in overhead to run a facility like this everyday. Consider how much raw material you’d need to bring in to justify running the equipment, paying employees, insurance, registration, workman’s comp, etc.
Recycling only works when you have subsidized help from the government. I like to think we did our best for well over 30 years at helping the planet live a little longer by recycling, but as the generations come and go, people are lazier and looking for the easiest most convienent way to dump their problems on someone else.
Single stream recycling is killing the planet and filling landfills.
Edit: Whoa! Thanks for the likes! I ask everyone to be more conscientious when recycling. Separate your recycleable material and take it to a proper facility if you can! We must do our part, we’ve already scarred the earth enough.
Yes, this seems more like it. When you examine the recycling process from start to finish, there is no way it saves energy. It sure makes ppl feel good about themselves though
Zero waste is the only political philosophy worth attempting at this stage. Recycling just promotes more waste and use of energy resources.
I also work for recycling company, everything you say is exactly the truth. All we do with our glass anymore is collect it, and at the end of the route dump it into a garbage truck. That's all it's worth.
Sad thing we already had a working system we used to return the bottles wash them and reuse them.
Thank you for your info. Now I feel hesitated to recycle glass in the future. I always tried to follow the strict rule to recycle and tried to be nice to our planet, so when I assume glass is more better than plastic, I will buy glass more. But now your video change my mind. When I was little that about 30 years ago, we really reused the glass bottle, the food factory in our town collected used drink glass bottles and washed and reused them, that was what recycling really meant to be. But at that time, we only had two or three kind of bottles to hold different flavor, that was so simple to sort and reuse. Now thousands of brands just make it impossible. Now I wish there is better way to make glass recycling more effective to go green.
I work for one of these facilities and a driver came in today; said I gotta watch the video. He was right, you did a great job! Thank you for coming out and sharing what we do with so many and spreading awareness.
Very cool!
Im curious about all the glass particles in the air... are there potential health issues working in there and breathing all that glass dust? Probably a dumb question and I'm sure they wear masks but still curious
@@flipnasty2296 Not a stupid question. In fact there was a thread further down that I responded to a few other people with the same question.
so I have not read up on this personally but multiple people in the company I trust told me about the research they’ve done. If I remember correctly, to summarize. There are two different kinds of glass dust. One is significantly more harmful than the other when glass is crushed like momentum does it creates dust but it creates that less harmful dust. All personnel are issued OSHA approved PPE. I know the plant manager over momentum, The mask that he buys his crew are well above what is required for that dust. I believe the kind of dust that is generated from fiberglass traditionally is that more harmful cancer-causing dust. I think Jerry mentions in the video Owens Corning does something with their fiberglass to make it also not harmful for humans to inhale relatively speaking.
Also most of the time machines run them selves. they are monitored by the plant staff but for the most part no one has to stand underneath those machines and breathe that dust in all day.
The parts of a plant and tasks that need the most hands-on attention are usually in the least dusty sections of the plant or completely outside all together.
dang I feel sorry for you,
must be horrible to get that dust on you
Millions of tons of toilet paper is flushed away every day.
We should collect it for recycling.
It could be used to make many items such as paper plates, drinking cups and straws.
They could be dyed brown to hide any leftover impurities.
So people, install a blue basket next to your toilet.
Do your part for the environment.
As someone who worked with cutting glass into window panes, wear hearing protection if you're near breaking glass for a prolonged period of time (not at home, those instances are rare enough). That high pitch can be very damaging, especially because the sound is so short lived that it doesn't register as pain in the ear, akin to gunshots or firecrackers
Excellent advice and from a credible source, thank you.
Please explain 'cling' further :)
@@podulox it's the high pitched sound of glass breaking or hitting something.
Just double checked, I may have mistranslated that part, will edit accordingly
@@Muropfel So it's the cling of the ching?
So neat! I would love to see more tours like this. I had no idea that fiberglass insulation came from glass bottles, and they use renewable energy.
@Ryan Liddle i would assume they thought the majority comes from silica sand. Not recycled bottles
@Ryan Liddle maybe they could call it fiber-recycled-bottles-glass
Yes. This is what Discovery, TLC, and Science channel used to be. Let's have popular RUclips content creators bring it back!
@@nonconsensualopinion oh man I miss the days when those channels were useful.
100% agree
Is it just me, or does he DEFINITELY need to do more how it's made videos?
I'm down.
@@JerryRigEverything yes please!
It is not just you, ma’am or sir!
@@JerryRigEverything let's goooo
@@JerryRigEverything I Hope you already started :)
I want to take a moment and appreciate all the engineers that makes these things possible in each industry. This is extraordinary!
But also to call out the manufacturers of glass, plastic and metal products, who don't give us a way to send the used bottles, cans, ect, right back to them. It would only make sense. All they would have to do is collect, removed labels, sanitize and refill! How hard can it be.
@@salmonella4u man I am with you
if you believe this nonsense, I have some beachfront property in Tennessee to sell you...
@@america1st721 Please explain. I am unsure what the "this nonsense" is that you are referring to and would like you to clarify your point. Thanks in advance.
@@dokukarmagad12578 Glass can not be recycled infinitesimally like he said, the glass that gets recycled may represent 5% of all glass used. Everything ends up in land fills. The cost of recycling is too expensive. Recycling is the biggest scam going, if you don't believe me, ask your garbage collectors or go to a land fill.
In Germany the glass is put in different containers, each contain a specific color (green, white, brown ..) This glass passes similar processes like in the USA. Because of the cleanness of the glass (its pure color), new glass bottles can be produced. Recycling is worth it.
Also we have a deposit (Pfand) on many glass bottles, so they can be brought back to the company and be refilled. You save all the energy of recicling the bottle.
@@percussorhd Indeed same as here in The Netherlands, take for example a very common item as crates of beer bottles both the crate and bottles have a deposit fee, the crates are instantly used without a special process and the glass bottles if not chipped or cracked will be cleaned and refilled. The multiple time reuse is preferable over recycle.
Norway have own containers for glass, some have bins at home.
We don't reuse glass bottles anymore.
@@sys-administrator fr?
The UK, as is usually the case, is far behind the rest of Europe. There are no deposits on bottles or cans, so many people have no incentive to recycle. You will often see people in Europe picking up litter or sorting through bins for what, to them, is free money.
As an environmental engineering student, seeing these kinds of facilities makes me happy. Thank you
@Instagram User yep that's a lie
What is environmental engineering like ?
@@camalex7782 basically, we're engineering everything that could potentially lower the environmental damage from the industry. Treatment plants, waste management facilities, every kind of energy plants, you name it. Like, I am sure there is at least one environmental engineer in these kinds of facilities' management boards.
@@berdansargol1577 like does it include alot of maths like mechanical engineering ?
@@camalex7782 Another environmental engineer here, everything will have some sort of math relevance in engineering but it definitely won't be as heavy as say Mechanical engineering. If you like maths and enviro engineering, water related disciplines would be a good choice.
I am 71 years old. I was raised on a farm. As a child, we took Coke bottles to the grocery store for a deposit. We kept and reused glass jars. There were no plastic containers or grocery bags. We didn't have a whole lot of glass jars, because we had a house garden and put up all the vegetables we needed each fall. Things have changed. 🤔
pickled beans and sour kraut.
and you got paid for extra bottles you found, also drinks tasted better out of glass.
In the Netherlands we still do that. 20 cents or 15 cents depending on the seize of the bottle
I bought wooden airplanes and chicken on a stick with my bounty of pop bottles at 3¢ a pop, what days we need trump back 2
I am 49 and I can still remember when the glass soda bottles were returned, sanitized and reused. The older bottles had the ridges worn down from the process.
Great video. Even with curbside recycling, it amazes me how many people won’t recycle. It takes zero effort.
Is it safe to be in that facility without mask, because of the glass dust. Nice video by the way.
definitely not safe
Glass dust is very very dangerous for your lungs, so im surprised the workers weren’t wearing masks
It looks like their face isn't covered in any dust like their hands which implies they take the mask off to talk on camera (probably because it is hard to hear on recording with ppe on)
OSHA is everywhere, and the safety officer has eyes on the back and sides of his head. I'm sure that they were doing what they need to in order to be safe. Yes, silicosis is a thing and dangerous, but there's no way everyone would be walking around with no masks if they were at risk of inhaling suspended glass dust. 🤷🏻♂️
@Matthew Vermeulen who cares
I have worked for a plant as a contracted electrician here in Lakeland, FL that makes this very insulation. It used to be a glass bottle factory. I've mostly worked on the packaging machine that had the robotic arm in this video, which was until maybe 5 years ago was done by a human, and other general electrical systems in the plant. Its truly incredible what they do with glass and how much they use in a day. And I will say its HOT and miserably itchy up there where the furnace is. Where the packaging equipment and the rest of the plant is, the building is very clean and dust free.
What happened to the human? The entire process we just watched was automated. Seems weird that they would fire a low waged employee who packages the insulation and hire a high waged employee such as yourself to repair the packaging robot. Doesn’t make sense.
They market crushed glass as an alternative to sand in abrasive blasting. It's safer because it contains "amorphous" silica, as opposed to the "free silica" found in sand, which can cause a lung disease called silicosis.
Hey Jerry, everything seems nice in that place but as a Safety Engineer i highly recommend you and the company to use appropirate masks against the dust or small glass particals. You may not see thr dust in the air but believe me there is very dangerous dust that goes to your lungs and stays there forever.
I came for the silicosis warning.
I was thinking the same thing, I was really surprised he wasn't told he had to wear a safety mask
Agreed. I was surprised to see no one wearing masks.
Valid point. 😷
That was something that worried me the whole video, they need more safety measures
Another benefit to glass is that even if it virually never composts it doesn't leech anything into the soil. From what I've seen even "BPA free plastic" isn't actually totally free of it it just has reduced BPA.
My point is that even if glass is lazily discarded it doesn't ruin the soil, bugs, or plants of an area. Although the sharp broken pieces are a physical hazard.
So true. Glass may cause troubles of discarded incorrectly but toxicity is not one. A piece of glass in the forest may cause a fire or someone may step on a broken piece. But leave a piece of glass alone for a while to the wind and dust and it will become a nice colored pebble.
That's "leach". Leeches belong in the "medical and pest" category.
Glass is sand.
"BPA FREE!"
(But trust us, we're sneaking in an as-yet-unidentified-toxic-hydrocarbon that will sicken you, your kids & grandchildren!)
Such a load of bullshit how our chemical industry uses Americans as test subjects. "Just sue us later if you get sick or die."
@@ceylontea5877 thank you captain obvious
"We can't let Linus tech tips donate more" man I love to see this. And meanwhile you help clean the seas
i love seeing my fans
@@AxxLAfriku same, I like using them on a hot day to cool me down
@@Hakaishin-225 lol
Not all heroes wear capes, but i think you deserve it one for this!
Waiting on Linus to take that as a challenge 🤣
That seems like a terrible place to be without a respirator.
I have binge watched HOURS of How It's Made. I would love more videos of this kind, on ANY subject. Well done!
COMMENT
COMMENT
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What happens to all my cardboard boxes? Looks like I need to be a bit better at recycling my glass.
I want an entire series on just recycling things.
@@sonarun Just one?
cats love the boxes so it can't go to waste.
Definitely want to know the cardboard recycling process. I've heard it's not nearly recyclable as we think.
It goes to other countries to rot or get burned and get released in the air, It's all a scam.
I want to know more about the optical sorter. The speed it operates is wild.
I actually work for a company that makes them. That super bright light is projected towards a camera and color sensor. Based on what is being sorted (colored glass or opaque ceramics), that data transmits to dozens of tiny air valves that blow material to one side and the rest is unaffected.
@Bruhhh Channel actually, electrons move slowly...
@Bruhhh Channel Ok, that is true but electrons move at a few mm/h depending on the power
It uses a fiber optic cable bundle with a fast strobe light to supply the bright light needed to detect the colors. Other than that the sensors are similar to the color sensor in your phone. Some of these sorters use low powered near infrared lasers similar to the type in CD rom readers to detect as ceramic and brown glass both absorb the near IR light very strongly. The laser based one has an efficiency of 98% rejection rate for unwanted glass.
Fun fact. Saint gobain has the market cornered . It's used a lot in insulation making. I know.... I used to work for certainteed in IT.
The sound of shattering glass is painfully incredible
Stone Cold Steve Austin would agree
It's like ASMR but I'm wincing the entire time.
@@kyleroxxx so will gold dust 😝
I work for "the big glass company" and it's an amazing material. I really enjoyed this video because it had lots of "batch handling" equipment - something my father designed for the same "big glass company" many years ago.
please thank your dad (with voice or prayers) for all of us and thank you too for your work.
@@siameseire He is not working a job for you or any "community". He works to make money so he can survive him self. That is what we are suppose to do,---you freak bum. You will need a baby sitter all your life if you don't wise up, and it will be a bad baby sitter. You already sound like a grateful communist citizen who has to praise others with a gun to the back of their heads. You---are responsible for you. Not anybody else's responsibility. You actually want to steal form the man IMO.
I am a manufacturing expert myself, but not with glass. I bet it is hot in there, like a foundry. I was amazed as a kid visiting Dearborn village, (like an industrial museum, not sure if it exists today.), in Michigan back in the 60's (with a better school than today), watching a "glass blower" do some fascinating work. I have always liked to learn how things are made,---because our freedom to do so got us out of the dirt.
@@EarthSurferUSA I worked for a glass company back in 2013. 3400 degrees in the furnace. Brutal in the summertime.
Would that be the one that starts with a "C" and has headquarters near the Finger Lakes region in NY? Frankly, I have a great deal of respect for that company.
Way to go Zack, raising consiousness about valuable 'waste' and trying to decrease the use of plastics to keep the oceans relatively clean!
Consciousness 😅✌️
His name jerry you fool. >:(
Just throw bottles into the Sahara desert and they will be grinded away by sand storms in next 50 yeras. And it doesn't take million of years to degrade a bottle. Glass even gets slowly dissolved in water , not by the pure water but by various alkalines that are naturally present in natural water .
@@Rom2Serge Woah! that seems pretty logical 🔥🔥🔥🙏👍 thanks for the info...!!!
@@NotSoGoodGamer18 you fool his name is Zack 😂 in real life
That glass sorter is probably the coolest thing ive seen this year. crazy how fast it works and how small the items it can detect and move are
mate its been a month and 4 days since this year begun :D
@@pandaa6935 huh
@@pandaa6935 who asked
I wonder why they don't remove the loader in the process. Using conveyors between equipment seems like it would be more efficient.
@@pandaa6935 Yep, and it still beats out the vapour ware and the actual real tech that was shown at CES.
The nice thing about glass compared to plastic, is that even if it _is_ in a landfill for longer, it has a much smaller effect on the ecosystem. Glass is basically just a rock to nature (so is metal), so having them in landfills is about as bad as having a beach made of sand (almost the same material). Glass gets crushed quite easily over time, so it wouldn't be recognizable over those timescales. Metals just get crushed back into veins in rocks, exactly like they were when we mined them out of the ground in the first place.
Plastic, however, can cause serious problems for life because it leaks chemicals into the groundwater, and can easily contaminate food anywhere in the food chain. I'd highly recommend using glass instead of plastic whenever you have the choice. Glass is infinitely recyclable and is still safe even if it escapes the recycling system. Plastic can usually only be "downcycled", meaning it loses quality every time it gets used, so it has to be in lower quality forms; it is also toxic to the environment. Also, most plastic waste can't currently be recycled economically, so it just ends up in landfills anyway, even if you put it in the recycling bin.
Not all plastics have chemicals added to them.
The local refuse company touted that they were recycling glass and charging us to recycle it. Well one day I went to the local landfill to take used motor oil to their bulk oil collection tank and found that they had dumped several truckloads of glass along one edge of the pit. We have an Owens Corning plant two hours away. I called the refuse company and they said the glass market had slumped and it wasn't worth it to haul; but we still get charged for them to pick it up; well I no longer recycle glass containers as I only have one to three containers a month, too many containers have gone to plastic, pain to wash and keep track of the glass and they only pick it up on the second tuesday of the week in a separate bin. Too many containers have gone to plastic that they won't take in the recycle bin either, but they make sure to bill us as if they recycle everything.
I saw somewhere that a local government agency made the manufacturers put in place a drop off site to recycle everything they produce; people have to sort it themselves, but they say more stuff gets recycled that way.
Another wasteful byproduct is construction waste. Contractors lump everything into their trucks and dump trailers and launch it into the landfill. We have a recycling plant that grind's up all yard/tree waste and would recycle all nearly all lumber that the contractors just pitch into the landfill. I don't blame them as time is money and they get charged for the load(s) no matter how much effort they put into it. The local habitat for humanity site would take all the lumber and if nothing else they cut it up for heating wood and sell it if they cannot resell it. The recycling system in the United States is broken and it starts with the manufacturers;glass containers are now plastic in a lot of cases.
@@fischy947 might be a bit painful...
@@funnyfarm5555 A definite hard solve. Recycling isn't lucrative so business that have nothing to gain or lose (government regulations)just dump which is cheaper than paying labor to be responsible. Just like seeing some roadside dump that somebody who decided it was somebody else problem. I'd think at least if the materials were separated into their own disposal site then one might have a 1 stop shop if a use materializes some time later
I know there are studies showing that plastic can breakdown with sunlight. Hopefully we can find effective ways of dealing with plastic in the future.
That powdered glass is ALSO sprayed on wet paint lines on highways and roads when the lines are repainted because it makes that lines on the road very VERY REFLECTIVE. They been doing that for years now and it works very well to help see how to drive when its foggy.
Interesting!
I have an amount of glass nuts, about two thousand tons
Excellent Video. The quality of many such independent RUclips creators not only rivals but surpasses those old PBS and BBC documentaries. This is top notch! 👍👍👍👍
Thank you!
@@JerryRigEverythingYOU ARE WELCOME.
The BBC are so ideology driven that I check my watch if the BBC news says good afternoon.
The best way to recycle glass is still to reuse it though, not applicable in all situations but breweries washing and refilling bottles sent back from bars for example is clearly the most ecological way to dispose of used glass bottles.
Back in the day we would take our old coke and Pepsi bottles back to the grocery store. We'd get a little money and the store would send them back to be reused.
Glass is very easy to sanitize and tolerates being subjected to heat and chemicals.
@Ed Blanchard Go visit any supermarket in Germany and ALL the bottles are recyclable and are recycled by the case: returned whole, washed and refilled. No smashing. No mixing. No million dollar "optical laser color sorting machines" or other costly baloney.
Bottle cost: $0.17. Recycling cost/bottle: $0.34
Apparently one can still manufacture "thick-walled" glass bottles today!
The USA is about the dumbest place to formulate sound recycling policy.
Make pickles!
Easy way to recycle stuff is to put a high deposit on stuff like cups and have them returned to get the deposit back. $2.5 sounds good.
That would incentivize the hell out of people to return this stuff. Homeless people no longer begging on streets aswell coz they can just return cups from lazy people who just throw this in bins.
When I was young (50 plus years ago) we collected glass and sold it to the glass factory in town. We were paid by the pound with mixed glass being the cheapest but if you separated the glass by color you got more depending on the color with depression glass being the highest if it was pure depression glass. I paid for boy scout camp doing this.
What's depression glass?
@@shoraz Depression glass is a dark blue glass that was made back in the great depression that had a slight amount of uranium in it which made it glow under certain light but not enough to harm you. It is highly prized by some glass producers and glass blowers due to that fact.
@@willwade1101 uranium glass is a bright lime green. Dark blue would be cobalt glass.
@@willwade1101 depression glass is not just blue. 🙄 Anybody who is curious, just look up what depression glass really is.
I also collected glass pop bottles way back in the day (about 40 years ago) before they started making them out of plastic. They had to be in good shape though because I think they just cleaned them and reused them. I would bring them to the convenience store where they gave 10 cents per bottle. I would usually get 20 jujubes for 10 cents (half a cent each) and save the rest.
It's wild to me that we don't recycle all glass. It's one of the few materials we can recycle without extreme struggle (unlike plastic) yet we still throw tons of it into landfills every year.
My town didn't offer any recycling services until about 10 years ago. That means for 20 years all glass and scrap metal I produced while living here was thrown in a landfill.
The problem is that if there isn't a local industry to use the glass it's not economical to be transporting it across the country to somewhere where it will be used; so households recycle it but it may just be dumped into landfill on the quiet.
Glass is mostly silicon, the 2nd most abundant element in Earth's crust after oxygen, at 27.7%.
Glass going into landfill is just silicon returning to where it came from.
The only valuable thing lost is energy. Given, that amount of wasted energy in *not* insignificant.
From an environmental view, wasted glass is not even an issue for the Earth or wildlife, *unlike PLASTIC* is.
@@PushyPawn thats like saying plastics is mostly just carbon and hydrogen, so not really any different than literally anything plant based
It's not only the atoms that a material is made from, but also the constellation and binding properties they have, etc
(another example: Computer chip wafers are pure silicon, yet you dont just throw them away into sand)
@@PushyPawn pretty sure he said it takes a million years to break down, but yeah, less damaging it seems than plastic
@@Thermalions Correct. My local (Regional) govt, of which I was a councilor for 8 years, could not find any party to take the glass (free). After stock piling it for 3 years we just gave up and it went into the landfill.
Ìn the netherlands most glass needs to be sorted by color. taking out one of the steps. And most of the beers in glass that are used a lot, most of them are standardized. We put some down payment on the bottles and then when you return it to get it back. That reduces it all to just taking off the old labels and sanatize them. and then they get reused.
I did engineering at university, and one of my placements was in a glass manufacturing company… I worked in the lab, and because of this our duties involve everything from the arrival of raw materials to the dispatch of glass bottles the upkeep of furnaces, cooling systems, and the actual glass blowing machines. It was the most diverse and interesting time of my life.
I am in the electronics recycling industry and while very unique in many ways, they share fundamentally similar recycling technologies, downstream recycling companies, and compliance obligations. We take for granted how difficult, expensive, but worthwhile recycling is. Recycling is expensive because it creates industries and jobs! Every pound of recovered materials lowers our carbon footprint while providing raw materials for the manufacturing companies of the world. There's still a lot of important work to be done to align sustainability programs with programs that truly "close the loop," it is heartening to see more people become aware of how *cool* recycling can be *because* of it's challenges.
Good to see a different type of video. Keep creating such informative content. Kudos to you
Can you explain what kudos is ?
@@kunalgahala4448 an adult version of a teacher giving you a gold sticker
@@coupesclips2926 exactly ! Couldn't have explained it better 😂. Thanks buddy
I worked in one of Owens Corning's competitors insulation plant for a while. They were making standard white insulation batts (paperless batts, papered batts and foil backed batts), brown batts (made with eco-friendly binders) and blowing wool. The whole process is very interesting.
I sat next to a R&D guy from JM on a flight back from Germany... I was visiting our filter media supplier and just about everyone in the industry uses JM for their glass fiber. Pure luck I sat next to that guy. I think there is a lot more quality control for chopped fiber but it's all a similar process.
Worked summers while in college at an insulation plant on the 'hot end'. I still chuckle at them allowing an 18 year old kid to drive a massive front end loader through a "it barely fits tunnel" to dump refuse glass into huge glass piles. fun times...
In the early 80's I had a customer in the Chicago area, Viracon Glass. There was a concrete pad with a Cat bulldozer than ran over broken or imperfect tempered glass. At that time tempered glass couldn't be reused in glass making. The broken tempered glass was then put through a crusher, the resultant powder was sold to paint companies that manufactured highway reflective paint. At night, the headlights bounced off the crushed glass particles in the paint - center lines, lane markers, etc., - so drivers could see the roadway.
Hi Jim 👋 I hope my comment didn't sound as a form of privacy invasion your comment tells of a wonderful man with a beautiful heart which led me to comment I don't normally write in the comment section but I think you deserve this complement. If you don’t mind can we be friends? Thanks God bless you….🌹🌹🌹🌹
That is way cool. I know Owens Corning does not use tempered glass because of the extremely high temperatures required to melt it. Mirror, safety, and tempered glasses are harder to recycle for that reason.
@@f0xh0nd51 Mirrors also have the silvered backing.
@@sarah2.017 yes, that’s what I was trying to say. The silver backing both confuses the optical sorter and it melts down different
@@sarah2.017 or aluminum. The mirrors we used in the monster computers for the Navy, back in the day (those screens the sailor sat in front of and which went "blip, blip, blip," showing the location of the computer and other floaters around it) relied on the aluminum because it didn't tarnish as quickly as silver.
Because the actual plated surface (silver or aluminum) is used, to avoid a thing called parallax (see note), the surface cannot be sealed (e.g., painted) to seal it from oxygen that causes it to oxidize.
NOTE: Hold your finger on a mirror and the gap between it and the reflection is what is referred to as parallax), it
The narrator has a great voice. Wonderful diction. So easy to understand, even for one with hearing loss. Keeps his voice in range best for hearing, unlike many speakers today who keep dropping their voices or speak in staccato sentences. Thanks!
Nigga whaat
same I have some hearing loss, I'd estimate at least half in my left ear and I love this guys video
love his narration voice. His voice definitely improved from his earliest videos.
@@City1Tiger With this lack of respect, I'm not helping you reach 100k subs. 😒
yeah this guy is real
With all the dust and glass dust I'm seeing, I'm surprised breathing protection is not mandatory in this facility.
Masks are for covid silly.
@@Shepardofman troll?
glass dust is the last thing you want in your lungs.
I didn't see any workers.
Ear protection is a must when recycling glass, saw none wearing that either.
Yeah fuck that. Wouldn't be anywhere near that place without a suitable respirator.
Hey Jerry, here in The Netherlands, garbage export (out of the EU) or garbage landfill are illegal. What about that ..... the world of garbage is fully the world of recycling. Buy a gadget, there is a fee added to assist in paying for recycling the debris of that type of gadget (car, calculator, whatever technical thing). Township or county garbage bins have all been replaced - by smaller ones. Pick up typically: once every two weeks. What? But wait: you can get fined if recycables are in the garbage too. So there are extra bins: plastic (rinsed!), paper, kitchen and garden greens - all beverage cans and bottles have deposits and points of sales must take them in, return deposit (or plastic bin). Glass is at any supermarket, same with batteries. Then there is the county depot: mattresses, gadgets, metals, yard-greens, wood, reusable, clothing, diapers, construction materials like brick and concrete, paint and anything chemical or medicinal, plate glass, oiled woods, on and on. This is drive through. All not sorted wasted is incinerated - the heat is used to heat neighborhoods or for industry, the ashes are mixed into street bricks. Government just uses threat of regulation to force lines of business to organize ways of working, so technically, there is almost no regulation - except that landfill or garbage export are illegal. Where: the Netherlands, the world's most densely populated nation (except city states). Ah, those windmills! The ancient ones already were pumps to pump water out of land below sea level, just needed more land!
First I was astonished that they mix all glass. Here in Sweden we have to sort into uncolored and colored glass. Here it seems as they are able to sort every kind of glass piece dependent upon the color.
What we saw, was one line of recycling, from mixed glass to clear glass to insulation, but it would be nice to see the other lines as well, like how different glass make up new bottles.
In Germany they also sort out green and brown separately.
As not everyone is in the way for seperating or an ignorant, thecompsnies who process the glass for firther use have always to controll and separate it again, even when everyone separates it correct.
In finland coloured glass goes to landfills. Only clear packaging glass is recycled. Windows and drinking glass are also thrown into landfills because they're made of different glass
@@eetuthereindeer6671Very true, some locations simply aren’t equipped to handle a particular input like grease or colorant.
Though it does confuse me that Germany with its high-population density wouldn’t have an issue like that solved..
nah, why downgrade? and besides, same principle
Just a question:
Is there glass particles floating in the air inside the factory?
If so, I think everyone inside should be wearing a respirator.
I agree
Agreed.
He stated that the fibers were so thin they were "bio-absorbable" or something, towards the end.
@@peterdarr383 They aren't talking about the fibers, the problematic part is the glass dust he could inhale, like from the glass powder he dips his hands in, or even before as the machines are sorting out and grinding the glass, dust obviously gets created all around.
@@daviddou1408 Perhaps some more research would have been warranted, if you had done your own.
Fact check:-
Asbestos is not made of glass
Asbestos is a naturally occurring mineral deposit
Glass wool is not a naturally occurring mineral deposit, or asbestos
The IARC considers glass wool, "not be classifiable as to their
carcinogenicity to humans"
However, the NTP has
"classified certain glasswool fibers (inhalable fibers that are *biopersistent* in the
respiratory system) as reasonably anticipated to be human carcinogens"
You are annoying
Therefore we can only dismiss your comment in its entirety.
*Warning* The state of California contains chemicals known to the state of California to cause cancer
Also for those who are interested in glass, even though glass lasts for millions of years in the environment. It’s not really much of a problem because animals won’t eat it, sunlight doesn’t break it down whereas the sun makes micro plastics (plastic exposed to the sun) it’s not harmful if you ingest it micro amounts, it doesn’t cause cancer and it comes from a beautiful natural thing called sand.
Glass basically gets ground down to sand over natural process of erosion. like volcanic glass it crunches it's self to small sharp pieces that get sanded down over time and make very pretty pebbles, by the way. There was a river/lake here where some moron crashed a truck full of glass bottles to be reprocessed. And since it was the Soviet Union nobody cared to get the glass bottles out. Some people scavenged, kids went there to break the glass bottles because... bored kids do that. 60 years later you can still find the glass pieces in the riverbed but in certain parts where the stream is swift they get knocked around by rocks, smoothing them out into semi transparent, emerald or brownish looking pieces of stone. I have a few at home but the place where you can get them isn't really safe because it was claimed by a hobo tent.
Sillicium actually gives cancer if your breath it without a respirator
plastic is natural they are made of same building block as sugar and oil which is polymerised and become solid. Some component is too similar to our own hormone (ie: BPA) and had to banned from plastic. A lot of animals tries to eat it but can't digest it except for some bacteria. Even plant's cellulose and plant oil can be converted into plastic but research is discouraged because bioplastic compete with food production. Plastic is organic but glass is not.
@@xponen Plastic is not present or produced by nature. It is therefore by definition not 'natural'. I don't even know what point you're trying to make but your premise is wrong.
@@m0rthaus shockingly nature produce plastic but it is called "resin" (the solid clear material that encase pre-historic insects, as featured in the movie Jurassic Park).
Thanks!
Thank you!
So thankful to actually see how non glass (labels, plastic, bottle caps)are separated from glass.
I wash all glass and separate the cap or lid prior to putting it in the recycle bin. It just made sense to me to do that. But i always wondered about labels.
Thank you for the video!!
The water and energy you use to clean the individual glass is probably more than what they use in the factory.
I remember when jars and bottles were actually collected to be reused. Back then it was proper to wash them. We used to just add them to the dishes.
@@nelus7276 I also think is wasteful to wash them yourself, but this video doesn't show what they do with the dirty glass, probably it goes with the labels at high temp? I know that some of mine are quite dirty with food stuck inside and i don't know if to send them to recycle or not, since i didn't wash them in time now will take a lot of time and water.
Used to have to remove labels and glue in 76. Took ford f250 longbed full. Took months. Made $76. Did it 2x more, then got a job at Dryers ice cream. Paid more, and tasted better to an 10 year old.
It's more energy efficient to just bin without washing,
Why?
Not everyone cleans their bottles
So your clean bottles get mixed with dirty bottles so theres no energy saving
Infact you have needless wasted water to clean the bottle
Not criticising just saying.
Before plastic became the wonder storage container it is now,
most fuild containers were glass
Things like fizzy pop, milk, liquid medicine
and there were pop bottles you can get a refund on after returning the bottles
Yes Plastic packaging is far more cheaper to produce
but considering the health implications on wild life, humans and water ways from micro plastics
And the huge sums spent trying to clear plastic from water ways and ocean
Is plastic actually cheaper than Glass. Perhaps at the start of the chain but include the cost of cleaning up the waste what does plastic cost us
We should go back to glass containers ,
The convenience of Plastics is having a huge impact on life on earth
@@javeedsultan8484 I 100% agree to going back to glass. As a matter of fact, i really dislike all the plastic and styrofoam used in packaging.
I once lived abroad and loved buying dry goods in the quantities I needed only, packaged in brown paper bags. Milk was delivered by the farmer and he poured the amount you wanted into your own container. Such practical and eco friendly living. I miss those days.
The reason i rinse my recycables has to do with hygiene more than anything. Our city picks them up every 15 days and food ccntainers start to smell and attract flies, as well as make a mess inside the bin.
I use minimal water, it is so very expensivve here that I am careful.
Thank you for taking time to reply to my post. Your reflection was well thought out and wise.
Be well!!
The fact that someone invented that sorting machine using compressed air is the most amazing part. Seems like it would n impossible to sort, but someone solved it....
I bet it's the worst nightmare for maintenance crew.
@@pop_popich its probably an insanely complicated and insanely expensive piece of equipment. Luckily for the maintenance guys, they are probably well compensated and just hang around until something needs fixing.
Theyre pretty common these days. Used for all sorts of things. Theres a guy on youtube who sorts lego with one made out of ego
I don't have enough information about it so I will wait for Huggbees' version. But such a machine in that environment would be probably last straw for me (esp. after some years of its lifespan). It surely is impressive.
@@mabamabam Lego structure sorting lego parts. Sounds dangerous to me. Just one step from machine making killing machine.
In the 1950's, we had a perfect recycling system; it was called deposit bottles. The producers took back the bottles, cleaned them, and refilled them. Worked great, until the glass corporations pushed for non returnable bottles, and lobbied until they got them. Then it all failed, and now we have an entire plastic island floating in the oceans.
Same in Australia - soda bottles and wine bottles were cleaned and refilled - we had then a 6d deposit (1950's) - which would be about 75¢ (Australian) now. 4 bottles would then buy me a meat pie. Bottle washing employed folks who would have had difficulty in getting a job, and gave them a salary and a position in society. Now they are
on benefits (tax pater funded). I think, given our current world situation, that using un recyclable glass to produce thermal (house) insulation is the next best thing. Even better would be to extend the re-useables to include standardised jars and other containers - the German model. Plus a significant deposit (refundable with your next
purchase).
Same thing in Iran
Now there's plastic everywhere
We still have that here in Chile, mostly for soda, with both refundable glass and plastic bottles. Some people seem to prefer disposables though for practical reasons (or lazyness), despite the small extra cost.
I miss return bottles. Hell, in my county they don't even recycle glass. Just gets put in a landfill.
that campaign was mainly initiated by Coca Cola, so if you don't agree with these kind of practices, you know what to do or what to avoid. The officially have a green agenda (iirc until 2035) which is already today unrealistic to meet. So don't care about the environment for decades and have not the slightest intention to change as well
Your voice has always been so calming
I worked in that Owens Corning factory about 10 years ago. We were doing a switch gear change out. Pretty cool to see more of the process. Those fibers were EVERYWHERE in the factory. It was nice to vacuum it all off at the end of the day. 😂
Where country?
@@reyarsyad what do you mean?
@@hondaguy9153 the factory
@@reyarsyad You mean what country is the factory in? the United States. I'm talking about the very factory Zack is in in the video
@@hondaguy9153 yes.. ohh ok ok
I’ve heard many municipalities stopped collecting glass for recycling due to expense. This is encouraging though. Glad to see recycled glass is being put to good use. I’ll make sure to keep recycling it versus throwing it in the trash.
Decades ago when I was working in a recycling yard on a military base, we would hand sort the glass by color ourselves. Brown, Green, Clear and mixed/other. I believe we got paid more for the sorted stuff (money went into Rec fund). We also sorted out the different plastics, paper and metals.
Glass is a highly needed resource. Recycle it into sand, more glass, silica for hydrogen production, roadbed inputs, concrete or cement, et cetera.
Please do more of these Zach! Thank you for using your platform for this.
As a Utah resident its nice to see where my recycled glass goes. Its crazy to think how much recycling helps. Recycling glass makes new products and also makes/employs jobs!
It is interesting to me to see how far glass recycling has come in the past forty years or so. Way back in the day we had to separate it by color before they would accept it. I worked several summers at a big glass factory back in the seventies. My union income for three months would pay for most of my out-of-state college tuition and room and board for the year. My dad worked in the industry for over forty years. It is a shame that plastics killed off most of that industry.
The kicker is that plastics seem to not be handled as well and recycled as effectively as its predecessors glass and tin. Wish we'd go back or just learn how to do more with plastics within the U.S. I heard only a small percentage of plastics actually make it to recycling facilities.
@@sitnstill4now Yes, many plastics are not recyclable and are shipped overseas, where they end up in landfills.
My in-laws were big stucco siding contractors. They would use glass as filler in their stucco for decades . Still looks like the day they put it on 50 years ago … we really don’t appreciate glass products enough .
@@sitnstill4now my town doesnt even give residents a recycling bin, I'm sure many others are the same where our government doesn't give a shit about recycling
Wow, that’s awesome! Today, tuition, room and board costs $120,000 for a degree.
Approved. I am seeing where you have sought and crafted the elements to have such sweet resolutions in energy and environmental stability. It is beautiful.
Fun fact: molten glass also absorbs microwave radiation, unlike solid glass. So you can’t melt glass in a microwave, but if you melt a bit of it with a torch, and then place it in the microwave, that part will continue to heat up and start melting the surrounding area.
Super cool! Thanks for pointing that out.
I have melted glass with microwave alone
@@hillaryclinton1314 I never tried it. I assume it has to be high-wattage.
@@hillaryclinton1314 proof?
@@hillaryclinton1314 Impurities on the surface probably heated enough to melt some glass, which then spread
It's super nice that they gave you such an in-depth look into their facility, even letting you attach cameras to machinery, opening it up and stopping it for you to explain.
What surprised me the most is that he wasn't wearing a face mask around all that glass dust!
I hope he can still jog a mile in 2 years.
Or ear protection around all that glass noise. Hearing loss is no joke.
Right? That was all I could think about. No mask, gloves, or hearing protection!
this guy risking cancer for entertainment
@@hashslingingslasher760 no, he isn't.
IF he was working there for years, he would.
For recording one video, it basically isn't a problem.
The sound protection though, is a serious problem,ö. As it only needs one exposion to loud sounds to get a permanent hearing problem. But he might have when not in picture or have in ear plugs.
I am very surprised they didn't require the mask protection. And taking the dust by hand...
I’ve always wondered how much it costs to build a facility like this. Or like. How you can even start to build one. Cause….. curiosity. 👀👀
Hi Zack, I can think of three items I'd like to see being recycled:
1. Multilayered poly packs of consumables
2. Batteries, especially EV batteries
3. Nuclear waste from nuclear plants
No.3 is not needed because it was all radioactive metal before it went in the reactor. And just got converted to other radioactive metals afterwards.
Just all in one place.
Just bury it out of reach, or wait until we find a way to use those products again in another type of reactor.
And nuclear plants don't pump out nuclear waste everyday. It's just a bunch of rods that need to be replaced once in a lifetime or so.
3 Nuclear waste may be used as a weapond or worse , we know because of certain boy scout that such info should be clasified and only available to proper organizations
3. He will become HULK HA HA
3. You can “recycle” it into weapons-grade plutonium, which can either be reused as fuel, or put into nukes. Of course Daddy USA only wants nukes for himself so he bans the tech from other contries.
@@Shoob__ I've heard they do it in France, and get uranium back out. Different process maybe.
As a huge fan of the serie "How it's made" i vote for Zach to make a serie on any renewable stuff/recycleable item you can imagine, very interresting and educational. greetings from france !!!!!
Huggbees would like to enlighten you.
@@Chrislk1986 it's funny for an episode or two, but gets really repetitive..
@@FJB2020 There are some flops. But having watched every episode of the original show, I still find some joy winding down to a couple videos back to back every once in a while. Definitely need a few days between sessions. ZeFrank is hilariously brilliant as well, but not binge worthy either.
That's where Zack, Cody, Nigel, etc. come in.
@@FJB2020 the rinsing machine wants to know your location.
@@Chrislk1986 Yeah I grew up on How it's Made and just recently started watching it again with my kids.. I haven't watched the 'Hows it Actually Made' with them lol.. Not kid friendly, but yes there are some funny ones in there.. Actually funny story, but I was watching so many How It's Made's that YT auto played a Huggbees version and I was about half way through it and thought.. What in the hell is this lol...
I was sent to a program in high school called 'VOP" (Vocational options program) and they sent us to a recycling place to work for a day. They asked who wanted to break up the glass, and let's just say, I volunteered instantly. Best work day of my life
This content is 100x better than scratching phone screens
I've been a stained glass artist for 30 years, and I've always sold my scrap glass on eBay and Etsy.. There are a lot of artists out there who either use it for Mosaic or melt it down. I have even fused plate class with spectacular results! I sell my scrap in 15 lb Lots which fills an entire USPS medium flat-rate priority box.
the real question is what percentage of bottles collected for recycling actually make it to be recycled at a place like this as opposed to just being thrown out because it is too costly to take it to the nearest place
Most glass is recycled unlike plastic, glass recycling is profitable.
This was my question too. It’s amazing how little of what can be recycled actually is.
32% in the us 90% in the EU ...google
What I read years ago here in central Florida, is that it was more expensive to transport the glass to a recycling facility than the money the local gov't made from recycling it, so they stopped, and just crushed it instead.
you are correct sadly in my rural are we have no easy access to recycling so everything goes to a junkyard or landfill
There’s a company down in Louisiana that was started by two college friends over a glass of wine. They grind the glass down into different sizes and depending on the size is how it is determined for the use it will serve. One size is used for costal restoration because it is similar in size to sand. Others are used in “sand bags” instead of taking sand from beaches or the coast line.
Can you give more information on this company or name?
I saw that story on them. I think it said they give away the sandbags for free too.
Sorry I don't remember their names. But it was really cool what they do.
They use sand to make glass and then use glass as sand?
@@danlux4954 Not sure if you’re talking abt the company I was. But the company I’m talking about uses recycled glass to make sandbags for hurricanes, bad weather, etc. They also use the glass that is on the more finer side and put them in biodegradable bags and use them along the coast line of Louisiana to restore the receding coast line. The do other things with the crushed glass but I can’t remember what all else they do. I’ve linked their video in a reply above if you’d like to watch it.
@@eduardomendes5220 theres a video on it
some places require sorting the glass by colours beforehand, which allows purer use of especially white glass, which needs quite a high purity to be used for similar usage again. I think it depends very much on where you are living and recycling the glass.
Yup the clear glass has a much higher value than colored glass when recycled.
In Germany we have a bin for glass with 3 separate compartments for green, brown and white glass. I guess it makes sorting them out later easier and saves a bit of energy and time.
Putin will soon close gas and oil pipe to Europe so saving of energy will be massive.
What do you do with blue glass?
@@Methadras Blue glass is uncommon in Germany. Throwing it into the bin for green is the answer for this "once in a year" question. The slightly blue bottles are mostly reuseble bottles - deposit tabs. The companies take them back, wash and refill them.
Put it in the bin for green glas, the two sorts can be recycled together. Its like mixing a little drop of blue paint in an bucket of green glas.😀
@@Methadras never saw blue glass I'm in canada
Safety warning: Always wear sealed edge safety goggles, filter masks and gloves when working around glass crushers. Him just walking in there without any of that is an OSHA nightmare.
Right?! WTF is going on there, nobody wears even masks and googles, when literally a glass dust flying around, but even driver in a loader sits like nothing is happening
@@llMarvelous 9:28 in the vid is something that realy dosnt make sense for me in. it says that its safe to inhale, and with some googling around i found " often fatal lung disease silicosis can occur from chronic inhalation of silica dust" and well glass is silica dust. So i think there is a bit where the host is not truthful.
@@kxjunnu6789 he was talking about the fibers, at that stage it probably is safe but that dust in the air is 100% dangerous
Exactly what i was thinking.
Everyone in the recycling facility is inhaling glass particles.
They are real men. Puts hair on your chest.
Household waste recycling in Europe is crazy good now, the large factories are so efficient that they look to find more trash than there is available in their area.
Vision AI processing makes sorting possible at profitable scale.
Only 9% of it usable. That means no matter how well designed they are they're still pumping out 5-10 times more CO2 then they are saving.
@@apathyguy8338 Whats wrong with Co2?
@@josephsolowyk7697 Fundamentally, nothing, its pretty much as with all things, the dosage is important. Co2 is really good at absorbing Infrared Radiation, therefore it captures some of the light that would otherwis be radiated into space and radiates it back to the surface, warming the earth. This allows earth to be nice and toasty and not an icy hellhole. On the other end of the spectrum, too much of it turns earth into an oven, similar to venus. Obviously this is a gradual change, however most species, including us, are adapted to the current temperature. Increasing Co2 and therefore the temperature will cause some number of species to be extinct, how many is obviously up for debate, however the physical aspects are certain. In fact co2 and co being so good at absorbing infrared light is how "smoke" detectors work, you shine the light through the air and measure if it reaches the detector, if most of it is absorbed by the "air" that indicates a fire, no smoke necessary, just absorption of the light.
I really wish the USA would adopt this mentality.
@@Tanks-In-Space yikes
How do we even come up with such technologies?! I know the answer but I'm still blown away every time I see something like this! Incredible!
I think glass collection centers should also be Centers for Aggression Release where you can just throw and break bottles to release frustrations. 😁
that's a good point, then you can recycle the aggressors if it didn't help
youre a genius
Those agressive people should become football/ soccer hooligans. Kick another guy in face and he will return the favor.
The way they handle the glass renewal is so satisfying from start to finish.
The biggest potential energy savings from glass comes from a return for deposit system, where the glass containers are reused. Generally speaking, the past sucks, but in terms of systems, the old system of return for deposit beats recycling hands down.
Yeah they do that in Mexico but not the us
While that was the case when I was a kid for glass soda bottles, those bottles were replaced with plastic bottles. To implement a system like that for all the other glass bottles and jars would be a logistical nightmare.
Correct the current model just pushes to costs onto the consumer, reuse will always beat out recycle energy wise. Generally speaking the past (in my lifetime) sucked considerably less for your average first worlder than today.
@@Elhardt Humans managed to solve that logistical nightmare 100 years ago without computers. The problem is that making a new plastic bottle is still cheaper than collecting and processing a used glass bottle. If businesses have to spend a single extra penny per bottle to use glass, they will choose plastic instead.
One thing you have to consider was also in years past that just about every small to medium sized city had a local bottler from one or more of the major soda brands, and outside of the big national beer brands like bud and miller and such, alot of the beer came from small regional breweries. Because of this, refilling wasn't an issue because transportation of the empty bottles was mostly local or regional. Even my small city of about 40K in the 1980s when I was young still had coke, Pepsi, and 7up bottlers locally, but those are all long gone now.
Thanks, guys, for an encouraging video. I always wondered how they actually recycled the glass I diligently put in my recycle bin. 😃
Right off I am glad to find out that leaving a cap on a bottle when it's recycled isn't a huge problem. I have been doing that in a feeble attempt to avoid attracting bugs to my recycling bins.
It think that's only valid for glass bottles. It is more of a problem for plastic bottles. But don't worry, plastic isn't really recyclable anyway :)
Waiting for him to be picked up and voice/host Dirty Jobs or How It's Made
Zack has an amazing narration voice just like Mike Rowe. I'd love for him to take on a Dirty Jobs style show, or a How it's Made reboot but with a visible and present narrator instead.
Nah, that's so 2000. Zach's probably got more views on RUclips than those shows had on the network anyway.
If Utah has a state funded factory tours show, for factories in the state, that could be neat and probably easier for him to get on than how its made. I know PA has one, but idk if Utah does.
@@ogsvx and what's wrong with a one off season of voice over work? Hell, he can even make a video about it
I was working a lot with fiberglass in attics and assumed, like many, that the itching would translate to lung issues. I asked my friend the respiratory therapist. He said that in training they studied many lung diseases including silicosis, asbestosis, even talc can cause lung disease. But there was never any discussion of fiberglass in his training because, as common as it is, people don't get lung disease from it. Not seen. More dangerous to work with fine sand or clay. It's not always what you think.
silicosis basicly is caused by glas and or its components. Just like asbestos, it's not dangerous until pulverized to (very) small particles. e.g. breaking/ drilling/ sawing dust.
In the lab we used small glas beats / pulver to destroy cells "instantly" with a shaker to prevent them from changing their biochemistry. (other ways of killing cells create stress biochemistry) The preparation is done in a fume hood due to the dangers of non-biodegradable dust.
@@steven-jellemeijer8412 Silicosis is a long-term lung disease caused by inhaling large amounts of crystalline silica dust. As was mentioned in these comments. Crystailline silica dust is distinct from the form in fiberglass insulation.
It is not found to be carcinogenic, though some alarmists might prefer to go with "common sense" over studies or the older rulings that assumed as much.
"The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) issued a press release in 2001 that summarized their re-evaluation of an earlier 1988 assessment. They looked at man-made vitreous fibers used for insulation, such as fiberglass, and stated, "Epidemiologic studies published during the 15 years since the previous IARC Monographs review of these fibres in 1988 provide no evidence of increased risks of lung cancer or of mesothelioma (cancer of the lining of the body cavities) from occupational exposures during manufacture of these materials, and inadequate evidence overall of any cancer risk."[1,2] The result of this investigation was to remove glass, rock and slag wool fibers from its list of substances “possibly carcinogenic to humans."
@@ceeweedsl
I noticed my reply was removed or blocked? probably due to linking to articles like: Measurement of Lung Cancer Tumor Markers in a Glass Wool Company Workers Exposed to Respirable Synthetic Vitreous Fiber and Dust.
That an agency considers something is safe enough to work with under safety conditions has no bearing on health. it only says you wont be liable. kind a like some companies get permits to pollute. e.g I consider rockwool and other insulations safe when they are in place and sealed off. but working with the products production, placement and demolition probably has health concerns.
@@steven-jellemeijer8412 Perhaps it's not yet clear whether fiberglass really does cause problems in humans on any scale compared to those working with clay or other fine mineral sand or other materials known to cause silicosis. Or the cancer from smoking.
Obviously there is a perception that if it's itchy to the skin it must be destroying the lungs. And any dust is an irritant in any case. But one would prefer to really know or at least be able to treat the material with appropriate precaucion.
For me, a somewhat health cautious person, I have two "data points":
1) the places where fiberglass insulation (not all glass) has been DElisted from lists of dangerous materials - and then others where it is simply cleared from the start.
2) That, combined with the clear message that it's a non-issue, coming from my own friend and trained respiratory therapist, I am personally satisfied to continue working with it on occasion without a mask. Since he has spent half a lifetime caring for people with respiratory issues yet seen none from FG insulation, I believe him.
But that is not evidence that you should believe me. Better safe than sorry ! So if someone feels unsafe or is convinced by a different safety profile they have seen, then they should act accordingly. Wear a mask or hire somebody else (more like me!) to work with the potentially dangerous material.
@@ceeweedsl makes sense. I mean. we use gasoline . the fumes are not healthy. but as long we fill up your car or lawnmower there are most likely no long term issues. Bodies can handle a lot. it is the dose that makes the poison. and even then its chance.
Something doesn't quite connect in my mind. How are the dyes removed from the powder?
I never really knew about what happens to glass bottles, interesting video!
why do you, craftyfoxe, watch this
More videos on what happens to other stuff we throw away please
What struck me the most is the lack of safety measures; like I'd have imagined the air gets thick with small glass particles that can be harmful to your lungs
Probably. In America, men are considered disposable.
@@ChairmanMaoio In China they are.
"I'm pretty sure my camera's covered in glass. Why do I smell blood?"
Very cringe video. I worked with glass and after breathing some glass dust it took me 2 years to recover. I couldn't even sleep because my lungs were so damaged. That guy has zero idea what he's doing.
@@jamesjonnes Are you sure that was clean glass? Glass is basically just sand, you breathe in plenty of "glass dust" by just lying down on the beach on a windy day, the stuff is everywhere in the atmosphere. In fact "glass dust" (silicon dioxide) isn't just widely used in food and cosmetics, it's actually naturally occurring in plants like rice.
Most likely you had a reaction to the materials on the label or cap.
As someone who worked at a glass container factory growing up I can say that a lot of glass isn't always wanted anymore, if a factory has a certain type of glass they specialize in they reject other types. My factory only did clear glass bottles from Seagrams bottles to Frank's red hot
That doesn't mean other places aren't interested, though.
@@CiaranMaxwell But you are talking logistics and money to get those bottles to those places.
@@brandona.deimel5155 It's still quite profitable to recycle such glass, so they'd have a deal set up with a company that would take their mixed colour glass and reprocess it.
Were you in Ruston?
The colored glass goes to other plants; amber to beer plants, green and amber to wine plants.
@@paulwittkamp4678 no, we did clear glass though, used to have another tank for green glass a long time ago, switch to brown, then became a secondary clear tank.
Another growing use for recycled glass is as a road base. Unfortunately, glass is heavy and adds to shipping costs for products and afterwards. Last I heard, the recycled glass costs more than new glass.
Silica is the most abundant material on Earth. Makes sense recycled glass would cost more than new.
@@matthewpaine6908 not sure about that. It depends from area to area. Mining, logistics, taxes, and waste contaminations in the ore make huge price differentiation. If there are mines near - new glass is cheaper, if not - recycled is cheaper.
@@Олексій-г1в Reminds me of that old movie "The gods must be crazy". If you lack the ability to produce glass a single recycled glass bottle becomes very valuable.
@@matthewpaine6908 Soda ash or the extra 40% energy it takes to react new glass isnt though
@@kyleinwisc There are a lot of factors that contributed to price. It depend on the area. After all glass bottles have a deposit, which increases cost. They have to be shipped, sorted, cleaned and processed. This all cost, time, money, man power and energy. Certain glass products need to be more pure than others, which requires more sorting, more cleaning, more processing, more energy. The glass used in fiberglass insulation doesn't need to be very pure, so cost of using recycled glass is low. Glass used in optics needs to be very pure, so the cost of using recycled glass is much higher.
Reusing the actual glass bottles would take a lot less energy than all these furnaces do. Reuse needs to become the norm, much more so than recycling.
It's true, rinsing out bottles for reuse is far more economical and environmentally friendly but bottles in the walls don't make for good insulation.
In many countries glass coke and beer bottles are reused.
This is The US you are talking about. It's a nation of knuckleheads who prioritize convenience over anything else. They love getting stuff and consuming it and throwing away the packaging without a care in the world. Asking them to carry bottles to the store for soda or wine is preposterous.
@NattieChristopher Reuse of coca cola, pepsi, beer bottles is still commonplace in less developed countries. Like in UK there is a fee when you purchase the beer or coke that you get back upon the surrender of the empty. The greatest use for mixed color glass is to reduce it to very small shards and mix it one small part into Portland Cement road building aggregate. It's romboidal shape gives a boost to sharp sand. Plastic single use bottles clog up storm drains, area real mess, and don't degrade.
I have a kombucha service. The shareholders return their bottles and they are washed and reused.
I have no idea how your video showed up on my algorithm but the geek in me is really liking them. 🤓👍🏽
The number of steps in the recycling process is amazing. I didn't realize it's so accurate and sophisticated. Thanks for the knowledge!
FYI: While recycling glass makes a whole lot of sense it's, unfortunately, becoming a thing of the past. Here in Northern Virginia glass is NO LONGER recycled. Our waste management company no longer collects glass separately and no longer processes glass in a recycling plant. They primarily state that it is no longer financially feasible to recycle glass.
As your video showed it takes a specific process to recycle glass and that apparently is an expensive business proposition, especially the separation or sorting phase. It's my understanding that not many of these recycling plants exist in my area and they are slowly disappearing across the USA as they go out of business.
From what I have researched most of the glass is just placed in the normal landfill or is shipped off to the west coast and then sold and shipped to China. However, recently China is no longer purchasing glass from us so we are now shipping it to other Asian countries like Thailand and Malaysia.
Apparently, it's not COST effective here in the USA to recycle glass so it's being shipped overseas. Your Utah plant may be one of the last plants to still be recycling glass, but I suspect it's barely holding on and is becoming less and less profitable to run.
oof, that’s a shame.
Oh well may as well not recycle it then.... Hey maybe my ancestors children will find a novel way to get rid of it... 🤔
It becomes profitable when externalities are properly factored in, such as hanging onto a functioning civilization, healthcare and a habitable planet.
This is a market failure, and a failure of state action, both now and in our past. As mentioned in another comment, there is an overall revenue that exceeds costs here once externalities are factored in. In addition, the main reason for this failure in the United States are two-fold: low rates of glass recycling, and single-stream recycling. Single stream recycling is less expensive internally than muilti-stream, and requires less education of US residents, but in a comprehensive recycling system results in a far more expensive process. We have low rates of glass recycling because the United States has failed to make it easy and more affordable to recycle glass. In Europe, it is more expensive to trash glass than recycle it, creating space and incentive for recycling organizations/firms to maximize efficiency as there is much more glass to recycle, allowing for more innovation as there is effectively a larger market. Many European countries have a recycling rate around 75%, and countries such as Sweden, Belgium and Slovenia have rates around 95%.
Europe led this effort in the public sectors of these countries, knowing that having strong recycling practices would be worth it in the long run, and devising systems up-front for multi-stream recycling to make things efficient in the long run. As a result, basically everyone in Europe is familiar with good recycling practices due to having had it for decades. This has led to a system that is efficient, eco-friendly, and profitable. In America, we largely let the private sector lead, which actually led to less efficient systems, especially as we tried to dumb things down for the average resident and go with a single stream system.
What you're are saying has some truths. Curbside glass recycling doesn't make much sense in most places. It's messy. Glass is sharp. Glass is heavy. Drop a load and you've got a problem. And yes, sorting can be problematic with older equipment.
There is less and less CURBSIDE glass pickup going on in the US, that's for sure. Where I'm at does a monthly pickup, which is silly. What they do in place of that is drop-off sites with large containers that get picked up once or twice a week, along with drop-off at trash/recycling transfer stations. I'm not entirely sure where the glass goes from there, but even the 6 yard containers for a small city would be full in a week (granted, military town where people love their cheap beer in glass containers). So there's still a market for it, but to cut costs, its putting the responsibility all on the person recycling, which is OK. Keeps less waste out of the recycling stream when its done this way, honestly. We all saw that purple alarm clock bouncing around when the glass was going into the pulverizer, which is trash. Which is what you find a lot of in curbside recycle--Straight trash. Call it what you want--Laziness, ignorance, carelessness...but its common and will be ongoing until recyclers have cans with built-in cameras that monitor your contents 24/7. lol
Glass powder can be used for reflective paint and "sand" blasting.
I remember using 4.6 kg bags at my job, each bags cost around 150$
Is that 4.6m³ (1m³=1 kilo litre)? per giant bag, or did you mean some other unit?
Increíble, yo uso una botella, y la tiro para que haga otra exactamente igual??????????
This video put me in the same delightful mood that watching “picture picture” videos on Mr. Rodgers did when I was a young child in the 70’s! Picture picture always showed how things (like crayons, etc.) we’re made. I had the same reaction then as I do now… “More please!”
You have a gift for making tours interesting, understandable and fun!
I'd love to see two videos:
One covering electronics recycling, and the other on plastics... I know some can be recycled and some can't, so it'd be interesting to see how they can be sorted and recycled.
This type of content should be mandatory in all schools. It's not hippy skippy, it's about understanding engineering and how the world works as well as how to keep the world working.
If you want to show something useful in schools, what about the future graves of all the people that are working there, who are breathing in glass dust every day? In 10 years they're all going to have lung cancer.
If you want this taught in schools,, you should also want the REAL truth to be taught..
Is it possible to simply wash the glass bottles and reuse them? So we can save resources and money.
*Fascinating process my family has been recycling cans and glass for years now after seeing what becomes of the glass bottles my family was impressed thank you Jerry for taking your valuable time to explore such topic.*
The good thing about glass is that even of it does break down to micro particles in the environment, these particles are not as hazardous as micro plastics.
We should return back to using glass bottles vs plastic. Yes they can break and are heavier, but overall better for the environment and were used for hundreds of years before plastic become ubiquitous.
Type R
Microplastic is digested by bacteria !
We don't really know if microplastics are hazardous to human health yet. It's too soon for longitudinal studies to confirm.
@@Sneakyboson it's dangerous to other animals though which should be enough
Amazing. Never imagined how interesting it would be to learn how glass is being recycled.
You should be wearing a dust filter/ collector respirator to protect your lungs. The finished product might not hurt you, but the process up till then definitely will. Other than that, a great video.