by Freedonia Focus Reports Team
August 2, 2024
Rising participation by restaurants, new recycling technology to drive growth
Cleveland, OH, August 2, 2024 — Post-consumer glass recovered from the municipal solid waste (MSW) stream in the US is forecast to increase 1.0% yearly in volume terms through 2028, according to Recovered Glass: United States, a report recently released by Freedonia Focus Reports. Advances will be driven by anticipated gains in glass waste generation, as well as growth in recovery rates. Efforts to increase recycling of glass in the US will support an uptick in recovery rates, such as grants offered by The Recycling Partnership for municipalities to offer recycling programs. Further growth will be prevented by the difficulties of recovering glass in single-stream systems, the high cost of transporting recovered glass, and limited household use of drop-off locations. Increased participation in recycling by bars and restaurants is projected to boost the recovery rate of glass beer bottles through the forecast period.
Development of new technologies will help fulfill demand for recovered glass. While some new glass crushing products have seen popularity in foreign markets, US uptake has been slower, as recycling is only economical when a processing facility is nearby, thus leaving room for much potential in the forecast period.
These and other key insights are featured in Recovered Glass: United States. This report forecasts to 2028 US recovery of post-consumer glass from the US MSW stream in short tons. For comparison, this report also forecasts to 2028 the total generation of post-consumer glass in the MSW stream. Total post-consumer glass recovery and generation are segmented by source product in terms of:
durable goods (generation only)
Pre-consumer glass (e.g., finished glass that breaks at a bottling or distribution facility) is excluded. The annual volume of glass recovered in the US from durable goods (e.g., appliances, furniture, and electronics) is negligible, and is therefore not included in total recovered glass.
Throughout this report, measures in tons refer to short tons.
Generation refers to the weight of materials and products as they enter the waste management system from residential, commercial and institutional sources and before recycling, composting, combustion or landfilling take place. Pre-consumer (industrial) scrap is not included in the generation estimate. Source reduction activities, such as backyard composting, take place ahead of generation.
Recycling is defined as the recovery of useful materials, such as paper, glass, plastic and metals, from the MSW stream, along with the transformation of the materials, to make new products to reduce the amount of virgin raw materials needed to meet consumer demands.
More information about the report is available at:
https://www.freedoniagroup.com/freedonia-focus/recovered-glass-united-states-ff65050.htm
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