Recycled products used for green design projects are gaining in popularity each and every day. There are even tax credits put in place by the Federal Government to encourage the use of green materials when renovating a residence. And because of the increased awareness of the limitations and stresses our activities place on the environment we believe this is only the beginning. With that being said, in regards to recycled glass tile products, consumers should understand that all recycled glass products are not created equal. For this reason, we wanted to review the main differences in the types of glass used in the production of recycled glass tile products.

Recycled glass tile products come from either post-industrial or post-consumer recycled glass. Post industrial recycled glass is glass waste that is used by factories and manufacturing plants that use glass in their production process. Post consumer recycled glass is glass that comes from cities, community recycling centers, and other community based sources. Both divert waste material from landfills but the quality of useable post-consumer recycled material remains an issue due to bottle labels and other contaminants that are hard to remove from each bottle.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, of the 13.6 million tons of glass in the municipal solid waste system in 2007, only about 24% was acceptable for recycling. This is because for cost reasons more cities use single stream recycling where all recyclables including glass, metal, plastic, and paper are all collected in one bin. This is great for consumers but harder on cities to separate the materials from each other and more costly as well.

We are often asked why our Recycled glass tile products such as our Kawaii glass mosaic tiles are more expensive than traditional glass tiles. We explain that whether post-consumer or post-industrial glass is used, the process of making recycled glass tiles is more labor intensive than making tiles using regular glass and this is what injects more cost in to the final price that consumers ultimately pay. Hopefully after reading this blog post you have a better understanding of what goes in to the making of recycled glass tiles. If you have any further questions please leave a comment with this post or feel free to email us through our AnchorBayTile contacts.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 19th, 2009 at 5:00 am and is filed under Green Design, Green Products. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.