New Jersey glass recycling plant set to begin construction

A new recycling plant in Andover Township, New Jersey, that will take in glass from area sorting facilities is set to begin construction in the coming months, the New Jersey Herald reports.

Pace Glass, the Long Island City, New York-based company that will own and operate the plant, says through a spokesman that construction will begin “as soon as the weather turns.” The company has received most of its necessary approval but awaits approval for the site plan from the township.  

Pace Glass has designed the building to handle up to 1,500 tons of postconsumer glass per day. The plant will use optical scanner technology to sort the glass by color. The scanners operate by taking 1,000 pictures per second of material passing by on a conveyor belt, then sorting the three classes of glass into appropriate chutes via jets of air.

Once sorted, the glass byproducts will then be converted to cullet. This cullet can then be fed to the facility’s glass melting furnaces or transported to neighboring manufacturing facilities. Dust from the crushing and sorting processes can be collected and either sent to a landfill or sold as filler.

Once operational, the plant will employ roughly 40 plant workers and up to another 60 truck drivers who will be responsible for picking up the glass from area sorting facilities and delivering the processed cullet.