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Law School Glass Recycling is more than trivial.
By Bradford Dickson
Posted February 11, 2011
Who said little things couldn’t make a big difference? The glass recycling program at the University of Montana School of Law shows the benefits of seemingly trivial efforts. The law school has a sustainability program which consists of providing collection points for various types of recyclable materials. These materials include paper and plastic, but not glass. The local Missoula community does not have established facilities for glass recycling. Because of this, the UM law school could not recycle glass. Brad Dickson could not bear the thought of allowing glass bottles to be dumped in a Missoula landfill, so he made sure that the law school could recycle glass.
The nearest glass recycling locations are three hours away in Spokane, or two hours away in Butte. In the past, other students had taken glass to these locations individually. Because Brad found himself traveling through these places on a frequents basis, he decided to put glass recycling bins next to the other recycling bins at the law school. Reminiscent of earlier recycling efforts in Missoula (1), Brad drove the glass on his own to the recycling centers in Butte or Spokane. Some generous donors helped to defer some of the cost of gas and trailer rental.
Although being a town with strong environmental values, Missoula lacks a curbside recycling program and opportunities for glass recycling are small to nonexistent (2). Montana, as a state, has some of the lowest recycling rates in the Nation.(3) Efforts were made in the past to have a curbside glass recycling program in Missoula, but those efforts failed because of administrative  issues.(4)
The reason for the law school recycling effort is to keep glass out of the landfill, but the effort also determined what level of effort was necessary to recycle glass in Missoula. Although there is no market for the glass and the cost of transportation is prohibitive, the law school recycling efforts likely provided a net environmental benefit by reducing carbon emissions. Over the past two years, the glass recycling effort at the law school has kept at least a half a ton of glass out of Montana landfills. This has led to a reduction in CO2 emissions of little more than half a ton.(5)
(1) Stephen T. Carroll, Jr., Trash Talkin’, The MontPIRG Recycling Survey and the Issues and Politics of Missoula’s Solid Waste 9, (University of Montana 1994) (In the early 1990s, using a van, the Recycle Montana or RM! program collected recyclables, including glass from the University district in Missoula).
(2) Other than those rare times when a glass crusher comes to town, Missoula has not had a glass collection since 2000. See Montana Public Interest Research Group, Glass Recycling in Montana, May 2004.
(3) Ivan H. Aliri, A Study of Willingness to Pay for a Curbside Recycling Program in the City of Missoula (University of Montana 2002).
(4) See Montana Public Interest Research Group, Glass Recycling in Montana, May 2004.
(5) Vehicle emissions estimates provided by the Argonne Greet Travel Carbon Calculator (available from the U.S. Dept of Energy, Argonne National Laborartoy, at http://greet.es.anl.gov/). Reduction in CO2 by keeping ½ a ton of glass out of landfill comes from Environmental Protection Agency, Solid Waste Management and Greenhouse Gases, A Life-Cycle Assessment of Emissions and Sinks, Appendix B, Exhibit B-2 (2006; available from: http://epa.gov/climatechange/wycd/waste/SWMGHGreport.html, accessed 11/02/10).
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