Glass Recycling Now Accepted At Bell Memorial Park

MILTON, GA — Milton residents unable to recycle their glass curbside for years can now do so at Bell Memorial Park - an offering made possible by two high schoolers and a no-cost partnership with a top recycler.

Glass can be deposited anytime the park is open from sunrise to about 10:30 p.m. nightly, in a large metal container in the back corner gravel parking lot on the far southeast of the city property at 15245 Bell Park Drive.

There's no need to peel off labels, nor to deep clean each bottle or jar. Tops should be taken off, but the glass can be recycled even if you forget. People shouldn't put ceramics, light bulbs, or mirrors in the bin, though.

"Milton residents have stressed time and again their interest in recycling glass," said City Conservation Project Manager Teresa Stickels. "This is a solution that's convenient for them and beneficial to our environment."

This option addresses a need that arose in 2017, when certified waste haulers in Milton stopped accepting glass curbside. People could at least drop off their glass at the Roswell Recycling Center - until March 2020. That's when Roswell officials prohibited those from outside their city from using their center. The nearest option to recycle glass, then, was the Keep North Fulton Beautiful facility in Sandy Springs.

Not anymore, thanks in large part to Ella Katekovich and Jeslyn Guo.

These two members of Milton High School's Environmental Awareness group known as the Clean and Green Club approached city council member Peyton Jamison about setting up a glass recycling container in Milton. They also contacted companies that collected and recycled glass, trying to identify viable options for Milton.

Those efforts led to Strategic Materials. With nearly 50 glass recycling plants around North America, the company bills itself as "the premier glass recycler on the continent."

"We are committed to making our world better, one bottle at a time," said Laura Hennemann, a vice president at Strategic Materials. "Our partnership with the City of Milton helps us, and helps Milton residents , do just that."

With recycled glass a hot commodity (with such glass being imported into Georgia because of limited supply), Strategic Materials offered to place a large recycling bin in Milton at no cost to the city. Strategic Materials will remove the container when it fills up, while leaving a replacement one, so there's no gap in service.

The glass will be recycled at the company's College Park facility. Then it will have its second life elsewhere in Georgia at places like Anchor Glass to transform into new glass containers as well as Owens Corning, Johns Manville and CertainTeed for fiberglass insulation. Recycling glass for such purposes saves energy and means lower overall carbon dioxide emissions.

Someday, Milton residents may have the opportunity to recycle even more glass in more places. At a May city council meeting, Stickels explained that the city will start with one glass recycling bin but could add another one elsewhere in Milton.

To learn more about sustainability effort in Milton, go online.