At a glass processing facility in St. Louis' North Riverfront neighborhood, a musty alcohol scent lingers from a pile of broken bottles.
Every week, thousands of glass containers — pickle jars, soda bottles and lots of long-neck beer bottles — are brought here on their journey to becoming new bottles.
The glass is collected and processed by Ripple Glass, a Kansas City-based company that made its debut in St. Louis last year, hoping to divert bottles from the landfill and turn a profit.
Despite being fully and endlessly recyclable, 28 billion glass bottles and jars are thrown in landfills every year in the U.S. And in the St. Louis region where recycling rates are low and trust in the recycling system is even lower, Ripple Glass wants to increase both.
“We want to give people an option if they want to recycle their glass in a circular way,” said Franklin Rosario, St. Louis metro manager with Ripple Glass. “You're not going to get the exact same bottle you threw into our bin, but certainly a piece of it could be back on the shelf within a month.”
When glass comes in, it is sorted, dried and crushed. The end product known as cullet is sold to a bottle manufacturer around 30 miles south of St. Louis in Pevely.
The bottle maker Ardagh Glass melts the cullet, turning it into St. Louis classic bottles such as Busch and Schlafly.
“The great thing about glass is that it's heavy and it doesn't travel very far, so it's all going to stay here in this local market,” Rosario said.
In the first year, over 140,000 pounds of glass was recycled at this facility, the only glass processor in St. Louis and the second in Missouri. By next year, Rosario expects that figure to more than triple when Ripple puts additional collection bins around town.
Trust in the recycling system is slipping
William Dierker sets aside dozens of glass bottles, and once a month, he loads them in his trunk and takes them to a purple Ripple bin in downtown Maplewood.
“Even though we have a recycling bin at home and everything, we hear that especially some of the odd bottles don’t get recycled as much,” said Dierker of Holly Hills.
The St. Louis region has single-stream recycling services, which means residents like Dierker who opt in can simply put glass and plastic items in one bin at home and get them picked up.
But across the country and in St. Louis, there is little confidence that the recycling system fully works. And for good reason. In 2023, city lawmakers reported that only about a third of recycling is actually getting recycled due to contamination and other factors. The rest often ends up in the landfill.
That’s where Ripple Glass comes in.
“There are people out there who want to recycle the right way, and they will go out of their way to do so, and that's who we're trying to help,” Rosario said.
And to be clear, Rosario said Ripple Glass is not meant to “disparage” or replace single-stream recycling companies, which are important and accessible.
“We cannot do that; we have no interest in doing that. We are meant to work hand in hand with the existing recycling streams, not overtake them,” Rosario said.
But this initiative could relieve a little pressure that waste collection systems face, said Orhun Aydin, an assistant professor of earth and atmospheric science at St. Louis University.
“Single stream doesn't work that well for glass,” Orhun said. “If the glass bottles that we dump in our recycling break, it actually contaminates the entire load.”
This does not mean that companies like Waste Management and Republic Services cannot recycle glass, Orhun said. These services are complex and ever-improving, he said. However, companies dedicated only to glass recycling can be more efficient and effective.
In the Kansas City area, Ripple Glass claims it has taken the glass recycling rate from 3% to 20% since launching in 2009.
Rosario hopes to replicate the company’s success in St. Louis, which he said is “hungry for a new solution for glass recycling.”
“I try not to, you know, disparage single-stream recycling, because single-stream recycling is a good thing overall. It just has to be done right. And to do it right is really expensive and takes a lot, it takes a lot of commitment,” Rosario said.
Glass is a more sustainable option
Glass is a more sustainable material because it is infinitely recyclable, unlike plastic, which dominates the packaging market.
“When you recycle plastic, a plastic bottle doesn't become another plastic bottle like glass. The plastic bottle becomes a plastic bag. And a plastic bag, well it's not recyclable anymore. It's just too thin. The chains have been broken too many times,” Orhun said.
A glass bottle, on the other hand, can be crushed, melted and made into new bottles repeatedly.
Orhun is heading a research program that puts sensors on bins around St. Louis to record recycling patterns and identify contamination challenges.
While his data so far shows much less glass is tossed in recycling bins compared to cardboard and plastics, he said initiatives like Glass Ripple could help change consumer and recycling habits.
“Bringing glass to the forefront of the residents’ attention as this very viable container that we used to use a lot 60, 70 years ago, which is now replaced in most parts by plastic,” Orhun said. “Bringing the glass back as a sustainable alternative for us to take its place back from plastic containers.”
At the Ripple Glass facility, Rosario said because there is little contamination, close to 98% of what comes in is recycled. The 2% accounts for plastic labels, metal caps and other miscellaneous items.
Rosario said this high rate can encourage people to replace some of their plastics with glass — and then commit to recycling them.
“Once you kind of get somebody to look around the grocery store, they're like, ‘oh, yeah, you're right. I do go through a ton of glass all the time. And if I save it up, you know, it does really add up.’”
Pretty purple design with a purpose
Ripple Glass’ bright purple bins stand out, and that’s on purpose, Rosario said. People are more likely to use a clean, attractive dumpster than a grimy one.
Beyond the color, the bins also have window slots that prevent rain from pooling inside and deter illegal dumping of large items like mattresses or construction materials.
There are seven bins spread across the region, funded by a grant from the Missouri Department of Natural Resources. They are utilized by residents and also by businesses and restaurants like Rooster on South Grand, which recently agreed to add a Ripple Glass bin in its lot.
In St. Charles County, a purple bin was brought to a waste facility two months ago. Ryan Tilly, the county’s director of Environmental Health and Protection, said it’s already well-received.
Before partnering with Ripple, the Recycle Works-West waste facility in Wentzville, which also accepts other hard-to-recycle items, contracted with another glass recycling company that required people to sort their glass based on color and put them in three separate bins. Tilly said that was a hassle for most people.
“People enjoy using just one bin, and it's very well managed. It's actually pretty as far as a dumpster goes, and as pretty as a dumpster can be,” Tilly said.
