Council on board with recycled glass ‘sand’

In response to Australia’s recycling crisis, there has been an increasing trend for councils to utilise recycled glass ‘sand’ for civil works and Cessnock City Council is proud to be on board.   

Council recently used around 90 tonnes of recycled glass sand for the Neath Road Culvert Project and now plans to use approximately 1200 tonnes of the material on its current works on Gingers Lane, Weston.  

It takes about 5,200 single use glass bottles to manufacture one tonne of glass sand which means around 6.2 million bottles will be used and recycled.  

These projects alone make a significant contribution to protecting the environment and Council will monitor the performance of the material, with the hope of a broader scale introduction in the future.  

With similar properties to normal sand and approved under the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) regulations, this recycled material provides a local end use for thousands of tonnes of glass collected from kerbside recycling each year.  

This use will not only help to close the loop on recycled materials, but it will also address the immediate concern around stockpiled materials.  

Cessnock City Mayor, Councillor Bob Pynsent said Council is committed to better waste management practice, along with increased resource recovery and reuse.  

“The war on waste is everybody’s responsibility and it’s so important that we lead the way to alternate technology and uses.”  

“Local government can make a significant contribution to the reuse of materials and we will continue to monitor technology developments for new advancements and others that further contribute to the circular economy.”  

“I’m so pleased we are starting to implement the use of recycled glass sand in some of our local works and hope to see it continue across our local government area for years to come,” added Cr Pynsent.  

 12/9/2019