Narrator: You usually need sand to make glass.
But this entrepreneur
crushes bottles back into sand.
She cofounded what could be
Louisiana's biggest glass-recycling operation.
And in about two years, she saved
4 million beer bottles' worth of glass from landfills.
Never let anyone tell you
that individuals cannot make a difference.
Because all of this is thanks to incredible individuals.
Narrator: Glass Half Full operates in a state
with a disappearing coastline, and it's ramping up
at a time when global supplies of sand
are actually running out.
Fran: We are using up sand at a faster rate
than it can be naturally created.
Narrator: So volunteers use the crushed-up glass
to help rebuild the coastline.
But is dumping material made
from trash into nature a good idea?
Fran: There's a ton of skepticism,
mostly about the sharpness of the sand.
Narrator: We went to New Orleans
to see how one company is building back shorelines
with worldwide waste.
Franziska Trautmann started Glass Half Full
with her boyfriend in February of 2020
while they were still college students.
One night during college, over a bottle of wine
that we knew would end up in a landfill,
we decided instead of continuing
to complain about the problem
and the lack of glass recycling,
that we would just do something about it.
So we had this idea. That was about it.
No waste-management experience, no recycling experience.
Narrator: They raised about $18,000
to cover startup costs, including a machine
that could grind up one bottle at a time.
Crowdfunding in the beginning was really crucial.
It not only got us money,
but got us a lot of community support as well.
Max: As this literal mountain of glass started to form
in a residential neighborhood,
we're like, "OK, we've got to do something here, quick."
Narrator: Since moving into this warehouse
in August 2020, they've received a nonstop avalanche
of glass to recycle.
We're receiving so much more glass
than we're able to process,
as you can see by the mountain behind me.
Narrator: Traditional recyclers send the crushed glass
to manufacturers, which mix it with other materials
and then melt it all down to make new bottles.
But Fran says there aren't any of these facilities nearby.
Fran: And then it doesn't
really make sense environmentally,
because you're spending all of that gas
to send a super-heavy product four hours away.
Narrator: So they decided to skip that step.
Fran: The goal was always to be able
to recycle the glass locally.
Narrator: Glass Half Full receives
about a garbage-truckload of glass per week.
People can drop it off for free or pay to have it picked up.
Once a can is full,
we will dump it into our glass mountain.
Unless it's a special color, it'll be mixed into here.
Narrator: Colorful bottles can be turned
into specialty sand that sells at a higher price.
So this is blue sand made from Bombay gin bottles.
Artists really love to use it.
People love to use it in their gardens.
Narrator: But most bottles are thrown onto
what Fran calls glass mountain.
So, glass mountain is always expanding and contracting.
We're always adding glass to it
and taking glass away to be crushed.
Woo!
Narrator: Eventually, workers scoop the bottles up
with this loader and dump them into a crushing machine.
Fran: It's metered out into the conveyor belt.
And it'll go up this conveyor belt
and hit the hammers, where it'll be crushed
and then turned into sort of
a mixture of sand and gravel and labels.
Narrator: The pulverizer leaves behind
some larger chunks of glass that are too big to use.
Everything that's bigger than three-eights of an inch
will be taken out.
So that'll include labels, metals, caps.
Anything non-glass will come out of this process.
Narrator: They're still figuring out
what to do with these leftovers.
The newer models allow you
to send this waste stream back through the system.
So we're working on raising money in order
to get that new system.
Narrator: For now, it's piling up
in the back of the warehouse.
Can we reuse it?
Can we re-crush it?
How can it be utilized
instead of sending it to the landfill?
Narrator: Fran and Max try to get creative
with all kinds of non-glass stuff people drop off.
Fran: We separate all the metal for metal recycling,
and the plastic we're separating for a special project.
Narrator: Like taking dirty cardboard
that can't be recycled to a pig farm to become compost.
At the warehouse, some usable sand is piling up, too,
because one crucial piece of equipment is too small.
You can really see the difference in size
of this compared to our machine.
So our machine can process a lot quicker than this can sift.
Narrator: The sifter filters out
any leftover label pieces and sorts the sand by size.
Fran: And you just scoop the unsifted product,
put it in the top, and it'll shake it all down
until it's separated into each of the five sizes.
Narrator: The largest grains of glass help pay the bills.
Glass Half Full sells them as gravel.
Some buyers mix it into flooring.
The smallest type of sand is a fine powder.
Fran: This is, like, the consistency of flour.
It's extremely soft.
I wish everyone could touch it and walk on it.
Narrator: It goes into sandbags
the company gives away for free.
Fran: People use sandbags to put up against their doors,
up against their homes where
anywhere where water could get in,
because we're super prone to flooding here.
Narrator: In between the powder
and the gravel is coarse sand,
the kind Fran and Max use to rebuild the coast.
Fran: So this is like the size we would be using
for coastal restoration.
You can see it's not sharp, so it's not going to cut me.
Narrator: At an event called a deployment,
the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana dropped
about 10 tons of recycled sand along Lake Pontchartrain.
This is the battlefront that y'all are helping us to protect today.
Thank you for coming.
Narrator: Fran and Max hand out the sand and burlap bags,
which were donated by local coffee roasters.
We like being able to move it with manpower
and kind of get as many people involved as we can.
It's a really beautiful thing to see.
Narrator: Volunteers load them onto a boat.
Volunteer: Thank you, Fran. Fran: Hey, no problem.
Narrator: Then the team drags
the 35-pound bags to the site.
They layer the sandbags in a line,
connecting two pieces of land.
These sacks will biodegrade in about six months.
US Fish and Wildlife agents returned
with more volunteers a week later
to plant bulrush saplings.
The idea is that the plants will take root
and hold the sand in place, creating new land.
Fran and Max spent a year working with scientists
to make sure their product was safe for ecosystems.
We were awarded a grant
from the National Science Foundation
to work with Tulane University scientists and engineers
to dive deeper into that research.
Narrator: They found that sand made from glass
doesn't leach anything into the water
and that plant life can grow in it.
And it actually looks like it grew the best
in the mixture of the recycled-glass sand
with the native sand, which is really cool.
Narrator: The researchers haven't tested
whether animals can eat it yet, but Fran has.
And that's actually been tested on my dog,
who ate a lot of the sand one day.
And we were like —
But she pooped it out, so all good.
Narrator: That's all really good news,
because even though Louisiana's land loss
has been slowing down, huge chunks of wetlands
could still be swallowed up in the next few decades.
These areas are essential habitats for wildlife,
and they help protect nearby communities from storms.
You can imagine a storm, which is fueled
by the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico,
as it begins to cross over wetlands, it begins to weaken.
Narrator: That's especially important in New Orleans,
because the city is sinking.
It was built above sea level in the early 1700s.
But today, about half of it is below.
Meanwhile, rising global temperatures make storms stronger
and cause ocean levels to rise.
So New Orleans needs all the storm
and flood protection it can get.
If that weren't enough,
there's another problem Fran and Max want to take on:
a shortage of sand globally.
Fran: And that's because we use sand in a lot of things.
So concrete, phones, toothpaste, paint,
coastal restoration, sandbags.
Narrator: But you can't use just any sand.
Fran: And it's a sand shortage of a specific type of sand,
which is a coarser, a bit more angular sand.
Narrator: That means desert sand doesn't cut it.
It's too rounded from being blown around by the wind.
Most industries dredge sand
from the bottoms of lakes and rivers.
Max: Dredging is really the only mechanism
right now to get sand.
Extremely costly, both environmentally speaking
and fiscally speaking.
Narrator: A lot of it's used in construction.
Every year, more than 4 billion metric tons of sand
go into glass and concrete for buildings.
Glass Half Full is a long way from making a dent in that.
Fran and Max hope their story will inspire others
to make a difference.
Max: I think this is really more so the story
of a community coming together
to say we demand change, and we're not going to wait any longer.
Fran: Two individuals decided to start this,
and now over 2 million pounds of glass are not in a landfill,
and they're making a difference in other areas.