Got glass? Recycle!

Curbside recycling is not a given here in North Idaho, and glass is not collected for recycling at the municipal waste dump. But the nonprofit, Coeur d’Alene Glass Recycling Company, is hoping to change all that with a little help from the local community.

Darla Kuhman, the mayor of Athol, recently became president of Coeur d’Alene Glass Recycling Company. She took over when she heard that the center’s founders, Bill and Melissa Mello, were bowing out to focus on family and other priorities.

“There was no one else to run the organization, so I did it,” she said.

Coeur d’Alene Glass Recycling Company is a nonprofit organization that charges membership fees in return for recycling members’ glass. The glass is pulverized in various grades that members can take away at no additional cost and repurpose in various ways, she explained.

“I was surprised that people are asked to recycle, but glass goes to the landfill,” Kuhman said. “People are separating their stuff, but there’s no forward motion.”

In Coeur d’Alene, much of the problem in recycling glass is the cost of shipping it to a facility that will pulverize it and reuse it, she said.

“It’s very expensive because of the weight, even when it’s crushed, to ship it to another facility. It’s not cost effective to transport it,” she said.

That cost is eliminated by keeping the recycled glass local. But the pulverized recycled product needs to go somewhere, and Kuhman has been focusing on educating people on the many ways to repurpose glass. Her marketing is showing because more members are joining and taking away the pulverized product for personal use.

“You can use it in stepping stones, landscaping, in fish tanks, fire pits or in water features. Commercially, you can mix it in concrete or use as aggregate in a septic system,” she said.

Eventually, she’d like to buy a glass kiln to slump (melt) glass for art classes. She also plans on going to Post Falls and Rathdrum and talking to city leaders about using recycled glass in beautification projects and in sidewalks, aggregate and cement.

Kuhman is also maintaining a partnership with the Kootenai Environmental Alliance who initially helped set up the organization. She is working with the KEA to help promote the organization.

Currently, membership donations help pay the rent, insurance and “keep the lights on.” The recycling is done by volunteers on the first and third Saturday of the month. Eventually, she’d like to hire an employee and be open during the week. The suggested minimum (tax-deductible) donation is $120 per year but hopes to reduce that fee once membership surpasses 500.

“Coeur d’Alene is so ripe – we love our environment – if more people knew (about glass recycling), more people would jump on board,” Kuhman said. “We need to bind together in the community.”

For more information, see cdaglassrecycling.org or search for CDA Glass Recycling Company on Facebook.

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