Clear opportunities for glass recycling in SA

South Africa has the potential to significantly increase its glass recycling capacity and is lagging behind the international market in this sector, according to crushing equipment specialist Pilot Crushtec.

Pilot Crushtec South Africa sales manager Charl Marais says that one of the reasons for the slower progress in local glass recycling is that South Africa does not have a strong recycling culture and the lack of legislative support for recycling, particularly the recycling of glass.

Marais notes that one potentially large market for recycled glass is road building. “Recycled glass can be used for road construction and this has been pioneered in the Nordic countries, the US and Australia,” he says. “We would love to see this success emulated in South Africa but the problem is that our relevant road construction standards – the COTO Standard Specifications for Road and Bridge Works – do not allow for its use.”

He cites the case of a road upgrade in the state of Victoria in Australia. “This was a ‘green’ project designed to use recycled materials to the fullest extent possible,” he says. “The road contains recycled glass from 190-million glass bottles, which might otherwise have found their way into landfills. The road aggregate containing recycled glass was supplied by one of Pilot Crushtec’s Australian customers.”

Marais says that there are many other applications apart from road building where recycled glass can be used.

“For example, it can serve as a sand substitute in sand blasting and water filtering applications and can also be used in decorative concrete and in the building of artificial sports tracks and golf bunkers. Safety is not compromised when crushed glass is used to replace sand, as the glass crushing process gives the crushed glass a ‘sub-angular’, which means there are no sharp edges.”

Pilot Crushtec’s entry-level machine for glass recycling is the ROMPI bottle breaker, which is hand-fed and can handle around 1 500 bottles an hour, particularly suited for small community entrepreneurs. The crushed glass is deposited into 30 litre plastic containers. The ROMPI is designed to reclaim valuable space during transportation or storage by reducing the volume of glass waste by up to 80% and it also eliminates the safety risks associated with handling empty bottles during the crushing process.

For more demanding applications of higher volumes, Pilot Crushtec’s BR0605 horizontal shaft impactor and VS100 and VS200 vertical shaft impactors, which can crush down to 1 mm, are recommended.