CHARLOTTE — After a weekend of Charlotte’s nightlife in full swing, the city accumulates thousands of pounds of glass bottles in recycling bins around the city.
In most cases, Envision Charlotte’s Daniel Heaton explains that glass gets collected by the county, processed, and then shipped out to material reuse facilities, sometimes hundreds of miles away; that’s if it doesn’t get contaminated and it ends up not getting recycled at all.
For years, Envision Charlotte has been working to shorten the loop, finding ways to recycle glass within Mecklenburg County at the Innovation Barn. Now, the nonprofit is launching a glass-crush truck to start the recycling process even closer to the source.
“That glass was heading outside of our borders and costing the city more than it’s worth,” Heaton said. “That didn’t make sense to us.”
Starting in late May, the crush truck has been going to partnering bars and restaurants, picking up clean glass, crushing it into sand on-site, and taking that sand back to the Innovation Barn so it can be put to new use.
“That will go to replace natural sand in concrete,” Heaton said.
According to Heaton, crushing the glass into sand at the source makes it much less expensive to transport and sell the glass locally.
“We’re eliminating the air in the bottle so we’re not transporting air, so it’s crushed into a much more dense version of itself,” he said. “This 64-gallon bin can be condensed to a third of this size.”
The on-site crushing also allows Envision Charlotte to pick up glass more often, helping bars and restaurants clear out their recycling faster.
Workman’s friend is an early partner, and General Manager Tanner Childs said he’s looking forward to seeing the program grow as a way to keep Charlotte litter-free and more sustainable.
“We usually send them about 400 lbs. a week,” he said. “Hopefully, we can keep growing, and now that they’re working with other places, I’m helping spread the word.”
Right now, the truck works with bars, restaurants, and events, but Heaton said he’d like to see the program grow to include residential pickups on a subscription basis. Until then, anyone interested in getting their glass crushed can bring it to the Innovation Barn.
The truck itself is an F-150 Lightning hauling a trailer with a small crushing machine powered by two on-board batteries, so it runs without any carbon emissions. Heaton said as the program grows, he’d like to add solar panels to the trailer to help charge the batteries, enabling longer trips.
“Charlotte needs lots of these to tackle the glass challenge within its limits,” Heaton said.
VIDEO: ‘Bottoms up’: Charlotte beer is first in the Carolinas to use recycled wastewater
©2025 Cox Media Group
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/cmg/LH3JSJEF3VBLRJLJQESEAG34AM.png)
