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FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Picture a beautiful beach spanning miles of coastline, gently lapped by aqua-colored water _ and sprinkled with glass.
Ouch? Think again. It feels just like sand, but with granules that sparkle in the sunlight.
Faced with the constant erosion of Florida's beaches, Broward County officials are exploring using recycled glass _ crushed into tiny grains and mixed with regular sand _ to help fill gaps.
It's only natural, backers of the idea say, since sand is the main ingredient in glass.
"Basically, what we're doing is taking the material and returning it back to its natural state," said Phil Bresee, Broward's recycling manager.
The county would become the first in the nation to combine disposal of recycled glass with bolstering beach sand reserves, Bresee said.
"You reduce waste stream that goes to our landfills and you generate materials that could be available for our beaches," said Paden Woodruff of the state Department of Environmental Protection.
Sand is a valuable commodity in South Florida, where beach-related business generates more than $1 billion a year for Broward alone.
FOXNews.com - Crushed Glass to Be Spread on Beaches - Science News | Current Articles (http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2007Aug26/0,4670,BeachGlass,00.html - broken link)
Not a new idea at all. I've been to beaches with crushed glass before--some of it still bears the label on it, "Budweiser". Not good on bare feet, though, so bring sandals if you do come....
Seriously, though I'm not surprised. Glass is a good, inert "filler" and, like an earlier poster said, quite similar chemically to sand. It's been used in asphalt, concrete block, and there's even a few companies that make a very attractive line of poured concrete colored kitchen countertops, filled with tiny chunks of colored scrap glass. When ground and polished, it has a nice "terrazzo" look. Glass is endlessly recyclable....
It couldn't be as bad as those beaches with cocina (spelling?) shells. I hated trying to walk on those. Even with sandles on, those bits and pieces of shell would work their way in between my toes!
I think glass is melted silicon which is a very pure, clean sand. It should work quite well.
Why bother rebuilding the beaches at all? Beaches are very transient features and continuously move to where ever the ocean puts them until they move again. Building beaches is a waste of time and energy.
Building beaches sounds like a waste of ground glass to me. Better it should be remelted into glass containers or mixed with cement or asphalt to make something useful.
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