[agurk]

> Normal glasses are recyclable

Is this the case in reality? Everywhere I've lived drinking glasses were not accepted as part of domestic glass recycling due to their composition [0]

Perhaps there is a commercial recycling route for pubs though? A quick google didn't turn anything up.

[0] https://www.friendsofglass.com/ecology/what-glass-can-you-re...

[brewdad]

I assumed my city wouldn't accept drinking glasses due to safety issues. The assumption being that the most likely case someone would recycle a drinking glass is after breaking it and they don't want their workers getting cut. Turns out it isn't really compatible with recycling beer and wine bottles.

[Mashimo]

> The assumption being that the most likely case someone would recycle a drinking glass is after breaking it and they don't want their workers getting cut.

All the places I know (Denmark/Germany) the glass you want to recycles is getting dumped in containers where it breaks most of the time when you toss it in.

[jnurmine]

Interesting!

The recycling containers here have separate containers for clear glass and coloured glass and I've always thought glass is glass.

Now I checked in detail what is accepted, and sure enough, drinking glasses and mirrors are specifically disallowed.

[consp]

AFAIK (but may be massively wrong) is that most clear glasses have many composition types and don't mix well and the industrial brown/green is all the same.

[veltas]

I take that back then. Would these hardened glasses be recyclable though?

[defrost]

"Yes"

From a glass making point of view you don't want them messing with expansion coefficients and bulk properties so they're off the table there - it's a waste of energy to reheat them up to ~ 1,000 C.

But you do end up with large volumes of glass .. a relatively consistant material, you might want to crush and tumble that (to take the sharp edges away) and use that sized grit | frit as driveway material, as additive to concrete where structurally sound, as fish tank "sand", etc.

[toxik]

IIRC concrete aggregate should be jagged so that it interlocks with itself. You actually can't just use any old sand, you need sharp sand, which is an increasingly scarce resource.

[defrost]

My bad .. mentally insert more commas and juggle the clauses :-)

The tumbling was only meant to be applied to application requiring rounded grit, you're correct that concrete and other uses might prefer jagged.

[inglor_cz]

"you need sharp sand"

Hmm, practical concerns about acquisition aside, would lunar dust work?

[jasomill]

Yes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunarcrete