Glass half full - meet the innovator turning glass into sand

Image: Glass Half Full

Two young American innovators are changing the way glass is recycled in the US, by turning it back into sand in order to restore the state’s eroding coastline.

The US recycles only about a quarter of its glass, compared to countries in Europe, which recycle between 60% and 80% of their glass.

As seniors at Tulane University, Louisiana, Franziska Trautmann and her friend Max Steitz were disappointed and frustrated with the lack of glass recycling in New Orleans. One night, over a bottle of wine, they hatched a plan to combat this problem.

Reimagining recycling

The duo wanted to create a recycling system that was transparent, accessible, and most importantly, actually recycled glass into something functional. So Trautmann and Steitz founded Glass Half Full, Louisiana’s only glass-recycling facility, where the glass is turned into sand and used to restore the state’s eroding coastline - as Louisiana loses an American football field’s worth of land every hour due to coastal erosion.

In 2019, with no money and growing student debt, they crowdfunded their first machine and began collecting bottles in the back garden of a frat house. As word spread, participation and support grew, and soon they obtained the resources to move to an uptown location. Now they pair are backed by a growing team of staff, volunteers, and community members who pitch in daily to divert tens of thousands of pounds of glass from landfill every single week.

"We saw an issue in our community, and instead of continuing to wait for someone else to solve it, we decided to just go for it."

Franziska Trautmann, also known as “that sand girl” on TikTok.

Glass to sand

The recycling process at Glass Half Full involves diverting used glass from landfill sites and sorting, sifting, and converting it into sand products, ranging from super soft, beach-like sand to glass gravel. The final products are used for coastal restoration projects, disaster relief efforts, eco-construction, new glass products, and so much more.

The applications for sand are truly endless and this method provides a sustainable alternative to exploitative sand extraction techniques like dredging and mining, which disrupt local ecosystems, contribute to the coastal erosion crisis, and costs millions of dollars annually.

The finished product - a silky soft sand

Community collaborations

Glass Half Full was awarded a National Science Foundation grant alongside scientists at Tulane University. Together with the scientists, Trautmann and Steitz have been conducting experiments with the glass sand looking for contaminants, and seeing how it works with native plants and marine wildlife.

After many months of research made possible by The National Science Foundation and scientists from Tulane University, the pair successfully completed their first coastal restoration demonstration in collaboration with the Point-Au-Chien Tribe.

With the help of more than 35+ volunteers, they installed a glass gravel drain and rain garden with native plants in glass sand at PAC. Overall, the team used more than ten thousand pounds of recycled glass sand and gravel for this project.

“My message to people is always to take my story as something that you can also do. So we saw an issue in our community, and instead of continuing to wait for someone else to solve it, we decided to just go for it.

"We didn’t have any money, any recycling knowledge, we didn’t know about glass and sand issues. We learned everything along the way. If you see a problem that you want to solve, just go for it.”

The Glass Half Full team spreading new sand to prevent coastal erosion