Las Vegas Bars Are Recycling Glass

On the Las Vegas Strip, 200,000 pounds of bottles mixed with cement (this material is known as "Green Stone") are being applied to the headquarters of Realm of Design, which manufactures Green Stone.

The other key players are Luxor and Mandalay Bay, which provide glass bottles from their bars and restaurants, and Evergreen Recycling, which collects and transports the glass.

While Green Stone actually costs more to manufacture than raw building materials, it provides a reuse for glass bottles that would otherwise need to be landfilled or shipped to recycling centers in other states.

According to the Review-Journal, Evergreen Recycling hopes that finding a local demand for the material would increase the likelihood that a glass processing plant is built in the area.

One of the other advantages of this process is that the glass bottles are essentially downcycled into sand, so there’s not as much of a concern about the condition of the glass. While glass bottles can be recycled into new bottles in about a month, this process requires color separation and removal of any broken pieces, since you can’t make new clear glass bottles with brown or green glass. That places more responsibility on recyclers and collectors of the material.

Read the full story at:

http://earth911.com/news/2010/07/14/las-vegas-bars-recycle-glass-bottles-into-building-material/