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Comment by pfdietz | Hacker News Reader

Glass is not entirely useless to recycle, but it's marginal. If the goal is to keep it out of landfills, then separating it can make sense, even if the recycling is just downcycling to a lower value use (like road aggregate or fiberglass insulation).

I've heard Glass Beach in California is nice; maybe we should create some more of those by dumping waste glass on a shore with wave action and waiting a few decades? (not entirely unserious)

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You’re not wrong but the whole story is not being told. For most glass to be recycled and used it needs to go to a processing plant to make the cullet. There are geographical constrains on weight so if you don’t happen to live close enough to one, that glass is going in the landfill my gripe is we have created a catch all recycling is good no matter what.

What possible reason is there for keeping glass out of a landfill?

Landfill space is limited, best only to throw out what cannot be repurposed from a physical space perspective.

Landfills are engineered at some cost to retain nasty liquids and gases that are produced. Glass doesn't need any of that.

Or, if you're going to put glass in a landfill, it could be cheaper to put it into a glass-only landfill that wouldn't need those protections.

If you're going to burn the waste them removing glass first makes that easier.

It could otherwise be reused? A lot of glass containers come with a deposit and then are reused once returned. This happens with some glass milk containers (exactly why I dont know). If container shape and size became somewhat standardized this could work better. Glass can be reused while not shedding microplastic everywhere in the process.

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