Have you ever wondered why glass bottles are expensive to recycle? A mix of white, green and brown glass is still sent to a landfill.
Heating up a blend of colored glass, injected with carbon dioxide creates glass foam. This glass is light but hard, and has an outstanding compression strength. It is an ideal abrasive, a powerful insulation, forceful sound barrier and hydroponic growth medium.
Andrew Ungerleider and Gay Dillingham created Earthstone in New Mexico (USA) in a drive to reduce the need for strip mining. They created a business model working with products derived from chemical-free recycled glass. This reduces the load on the local landfill, reduces the need for strip mining and one gets paid to take the waste.
Åke Mård, a Swedish builder, created a multifunctional construction material from glass foam: no mice bite their way through it, no moulds ever grow on it, no water ever permeates it, making foam glass an ideal option for the building industry.
