The closure of the Ardagh Glass Packaging plant in Seattle in July 2024 has created significant challenges for glass recycling in the region.
Residents and businesses in Seattle have continued to place their empty glass bottles in recycling bins, hoping to keep the recycling loop intact, but the local market has been disrupted by the manufacturer’s shutdown.
Seattle Public Utilities officials have expressed their relief over recent rail improvements that have opened up new long-distance markets for glass recycling, as the situation has prompted a pause in local glass recycling.
“It’s not recycling until materials are actually used to make new products again,” remarked McKenna Morrigan from Seattle Public Utilities.
Prior to the Ardagh plant’s closure, much of the glass waste from the Seattle area was successfully recycled into new bottles at the facility located in the Duwamish Valley.
Recyclables collected through the city’s blue bins were taken to a sorting plant operated by Republic Services, and then transferred to a facility operated by Strategic Materials along the Duwamish River for further processing.
However, with the closure of Ardagh, an accumulation of thousands of tons of unusable bottles began to fill warehouses in South Seattle.
Sibelco, a global mining and recycling firm that acquired Strategic Materials in 2024, continued operations despite losing its primary local market.
“We kept operating and kept shipping material,” stated Laura Hennemann from Sibelco.
Although the company was able to manage the continued flow of recyclables, Seattle’s recycling infrastructure had to confront significant challenges moving forward.
Morrigan highlighted the issues associated with glass recycling, noting, “The challenge with glass is that it is heavy.
Transporting it over longer distances, especially by truck, can reduce the environmental benefits and also increase the costs of recycling.”
After exhausting storage options, some glass was unfortunately sent to a landfill.
“Fortunately, that was a pretty brief period of time,” Morrigan noted, indicating that the situation has since improved.
Recently, Seattle Public Utilities announced that improvements in railroad capacity now enable the Sibelco plant to access new markets in western states for recycled glass.
“I’m grateful Seattle residents continued recycling their glass throughout this pause,” said Andrew Lee, head of Seattle Public Utilities.
“Residents’ commitment is paying off as glass is once again flowing to intended end markets in the recycling chain.”
In contrast, the city of Tacoma halted acceptance of glass for recycling in September 2024, sending materials to landfills until a new arrangement began in January 2025 to ship glass to Portland for recycling into new bottles.
Currently, Sibelco’s Seattle facility is sending crushed glass to manufacturers in undisclosed western states for production of both bottles and fiberglass, though officials have not disclosed specific locations or details regarding completed rail improvements.
While the Seattle plant primarily receives glass bottles from Washington, Oregon, and Canada, the recycled glass now serves varied uses.
According to Hennemann, bottles remain the predominant product manufactured from recycled glass, with fiberglass closely following behind.
Seattle’s Public Utilities emphasized that glass, plastic, and aluminum cans are essential recyclable materials that can effectively become new containers through recycling programs.
Morrigan elaborated on the environmental benefits of recycling, stating that every ton of recycled glass saves considerable raw materials, preventing the mining of significant quantities of essential components like sand and limestone used in glass manufacturing.
Aside from resource conservation, recycling glass also helps in reducing some of the energy consumption associated with the glass-making process.
Despite these benefits, the task of transporting and processing recycled glass carries its own environmental implications.
Previously, before the plant’s closure, the Ardagh glass plant’s operations led to the region becoming one of the Duwamish Valley’s worst polluters due to multiple violations related to clean-air and clean-water regulations.
Environmental concerns have also arisen nationally, with O-I Glass in Portland facing continued scrutiny for air pollution violations, resulting in fines amid ongoing violations.
Morrigan argued that reusing containers presents a more sustainable alternative than recycling.
“The best thing is on draft, right?” she remarked, encouraging residents to refill and repurpose containers to minimize overall consumption.
Despite the environmental challenges highlighted by the glass recycling industry, the EPA reports that Americans dispose of approximately 12 million tons of glass each year, with about one-third of it successfully recycled into new products.
In Washington, an estimated 40% of glass is recycled, a figure expected to increase with the implementation of the state’s new recycling law aimed at sustaining waste reduction efforts from product packaging.
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