Association trials turning glass into sand
The Samoa Recycling and Waste Management Association successfully executed its first trial for a project turning glass bottles into sand this week.
The association announced in a Facebook post earlier this week that they had made their first trial run of turning glass bottles in to sand.
Two pictures posted to their page show pieces of glass and a sandy final product, after the glass had been pulverised.
The President of the association, Marina Keil was contacted by the Samoa Observer for comment on Wednesday.
It was reported in early 2020 that Samoa’s glass imports could soon be crushed into new life instead of taking up space in landfill thanks to the arrival of a new machine capable of crushing 300 kilograms of glass in an hour.
The association at the time had purchased the machine with funds from the United States Embassy, with hopes to turn glass waste into material for pavements, roads or bricks - potentially saving thousands of dollars.
The machine is fed manually with glass bottles at the top, and the crushed glass is emptied out the bottom into a tray or bucket.
The recycled glass is perfectly suitable for garden design and glass sand is used to create road surfaces.
It perfectly removes water; when glass sand is used for the road surface, the quality of the road surface improves. Glass sand can be mixed with gravel and used separately or as an additive to asphalt.
When adding glass sand to asphalt mixture, its durability increases and the costs for road construction are reduced, and it can also be used for the preparation of concrete mixture as a substitute for sand or gravel.
Samoa will also soon have a recycling facility in the country to process recycled waste material which would come courtesy of the Japanese Government.
In March this year a grant of up to US$190,123 (approximately $482,000 tala) was presented to the S.R.W.M.A to fund the building of a warehouse for the storage of waste material.