What to do with it, though, remains a dilemma. It’s too expensive to ship to places where glass is truly recycled, so the city and its garbage hauler plan to crush it into cullet, the industry term for furnace-ready recycled glass.

“Our challenge in North Idaho is that shipping this very heavy product is expensive to begin with, and there aren’t really good places we can send it to in order to not run huge deficits in the solid waste utility by doing so,” said Sam Taylor, the deputy city administrator. The City Council awarded a new contract for garbage and recycling collection to Coeur d’Alene Garbage Service last spring, ending a 16-year association with Waste Management. In the new contract, the city asked for a strategy for recycling glass containers, which now end up buried at the Fighting Creek Landfill south of Coeur d’Alene. Full story. Scott Maben, SR

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