Santos Jorge, a business engaged in managing and treating recycled glass, and the Eurecat technology centre have teamed up to develop a new innovative process for recovering glass waste which until now ended up in landfill and turn it into new market products and applications such as a substitute for sand in golf bunkers.
The Cyclo-Vidre project “has enabled us to turn second and third quality products which were going to landfill into a great product which can be used to replace sand in golf bunkers through micronised glass,” says Armand Sánchez Santos, CEO at Santos Jorge. “There are already five of them at La Roqueta Golf Club.”
The innovation makes it possible to manage and recycle up to 98 percent of glass containers from domestic use, “validating on a laboratory scale five pathways of new value-added products which are technically, financially and environmentally viable,” explains Sandra Meca, the project’s coordinator and head of the Waste and Circular Economy Line in Eurecat’s Waste, Energy and Environmental Impact Unit.
“The growing cost of disposing of waste in landfills coupled with rising raw material prices means that circular use of waste and by-products is increasingly pivotal to companies’ competitiveness,” notes Jesús Boschmonart, head of Business Development for Eurecat’s Green Cities and Industries team.
“The innovation can have an impact in several sectors since its applications range from material for water filters for swimming pools or for drinking water to using it as a filler to add technical performance to composite materials or as abrasion materials for production processes,” comments Frederic Clarens, director of Eurecat’s Waste, Energy and Environmental Impact Unit.
The project has been backed by the Business R&D Cluster programme for circular economy projects in waste sponsored by ACCIÓ, the Agency for Business Competitiveness in the Ministry of Business and Labour, and the Catalan Waste Agency in the Ministry of Climate Action, Food and Rural Agenda.
