NOLA recycling company is expanding to South MS. The goal? Restore vanishing coastlines

In Louisiana, they turn old bottles into sand. They crush and grind the glass until it forms a fine powder, and they bring it to the vanishing coastline.

It is all the work of a determined young startup confronting an urgent, tough problem of disappearing land on the Gulf Coast.

And now, the recycling center is coming to Bay St. Louis.

“People are starting to pay more attention to waste,” said Riley Singer, the logistics director at the New Orleans-based Glass Half Full“It appeals to coastal towns.”

This spring, Glass Half Full announced plans to start glass pickups on the Mississippi Coast, starting in the Bay. They hope, they said, that bottles from homes and businesses across the Gulf South can repair the wetlands the region’s economy and people rely on — before it is too late.

The startup’s novel solution that has galvanized scientists and attracted a national spotlight began in 2020. Glass Half Full collects glass at a processing hub in New Orleans and picks it up from residents who choose to pay a fee. They sort the glass, remove metal and plastic and crush it into different textures of sand like soft powder or gravel.

They use it for flooring, jewelry and disaster relief sandbags. But much of it is sent to the Louisiana coast for the growing field of restoration to combat the effects of climate change.

That’s because there is another problem: the world is running out of sand.

In the Gulf South, storms and rising seas have sunk wetlands and submerged barrier islands. Harrison County has battled to keep sand put on man-made coastal beaches after winds sweep it onto Highway 90 and waves erode it into the Gulf.

“It would be really amazing if we could use all that glass being thrown out,” said Ansley Levine, a master’s student at Mississippi State who is studying whether native marsh plants can grow in Glass Half Full’s sand. “The goal is to protect our beautiful habitats for the future.”

So far, two common Mississippi marsh plants are growing well in the recycled sand, Levine said. That means soon sand eroded from shorelines and beaches could be replenished by Glass Half Full, instead of dredged from the Mississippi Sound.

Marshes, wetlands and barrier islands “are the things that protect inland communities from sea level rise and storm surge,” said Julie Albert, a researcher at ReCoast, a project that studies safety and utility of recycled glass sand in coastal restoration. “They’re a buffer between us and the Gulf.”

Glass Half Full rebuilds those buffers by adding sand and restoring native plants — and their popularity is growing. They have garnered the attention of people across the country on TikTok. Their videos that show how their sand-making process works have amassed thousands of views and reshares.

ReCoast also won a $5 million grant last fall to expand their research, and Glass Half Full finished three restoration projects in Louisiana in the past year.

Glass Half Full’s service will cost Bay St. Louis residents who sign up $25 a month, or $22 a month on a yearly plan. Singer said they will offer discounts or a free month of service to start the program, and also could expand it to local businesses that want to recycle glass waste. There is no exact start date, but there’s a summer target to begin picking up glass.

And the sand made from Bay St. Louis bottles, Singer said, “will go straight to the coast.”