This article was originally published by the Chesapeake Bay Journal, an award-winning nonprofit news organization that has been covering environmental issues in the Bay region for more than 30 years.
A glass bottle or jar can be theoretically recycled an infinite number of times without degrading in quality. Recycled glass also uses less energy to create new products, results in lower greenhouse gas emissions and reduces demand for raw materials.
In the European Union, about 80% of food and beverage containers made from glass are recycled. The United States lags far behind, with barely 30% of its glass being turned into new products.
That figure may sound low, but many states in the Chesapeake Bay watershed still struggle to achieve it.
So, what gives? Industry experts and government officials point to a confluence of factors working to hamper the region’s glass recycling efforts:
A shortage of local glass recycling plants and bottle manufacturers that accept used glass
Relatively wide adoption of single-stream recycling, which is convenient for consumers but rough on glass bottles and jars
A policy environment that does little to promote glass recycling. New York, for example, is the only Bay state that has passed a “bottle bill,” legislation requiring consumers to pay a small, refundable fee when they purchase a product in a glass container.
Here’s a look at the state of glass recycling around the region.
Virginia
In Virginia, about 10% of glass collected for recycling actually gets recycled. Much of the rest is used as a cover material for landfills, according to the Virginia Recycling Association.
The state has few manufacturing customers who want it. According to the Glass Packaging Institute (GPI), Virginia as of 2024 had only three plants making products out of recycled glass: a plant in Norfolk that grinds shards into an abrasive grit for industrial cleaning, and two bottle factories owned by the global glass manufacturer O-I Glass, formerly Owens-Illinois.
Many localities throughout Virginia stopped accepting glass in curbside recycling because the glass can break and contaminate the rest of the materials, officials say. Glass is also heavy and therefore expensive to transport, especially with no customers nearby.
Faced with this money-losing proposition, Fairfax County started the Purple Can Club in 2019. Under the program, residents can dispose of glass waste in large purple dumpsters strategically placed around the county. From there, the waste is hauled to a manufacturer in Pennsylvania, which turns it into new bottles. Arlington County, the city of Alexandria, and Prince William County have since joined the initiative.
Since the program started, the Purple Can Club has recycled more than 51,000 tons of glass and expanded to more than 50 drop-off locations across Northern Virginia.
The nonprofit Keep Virginia Beautiful recommends that more localities invest in glass recycling infrastructure, such as processing facilities or designated drop-off bins for glass. The group also has joined other environmentalists in advocating for a state bottle bill.
Cristi Lawton, executive director of Keep Virginia Beautiful, said the organization promotes recycling in general but stresses that people should first and foremost reduce and reuse.
Maryland
In Maryland, 24% of glass collected for recycling ends up getting recycled, according to a statewide recycling assessment authored by the Maryland Department of the Environment in 2025.
Glass recycling is almost nonexistent in Southern Maryland and the Eastern Shore. In these mostly rural areas, it’s financially infeasible because the amount of glass collected is too small and the cost of trucking it to faraway processing facilities is too high, officials say.
Maryland only has three material recovery facilities, which prepare recycled materials to be sold to manufacturers who will turn them into new products. All are located along the Interstate 95 corridor between Baltimore and the District of Columbia.
Even where glass recycling is available, it’s costly. Anne Arundel County’s program, for example, loses $20 for every ton of glass in its recycling stream, officials say.
So, as in Virginia, many counties are using crushed glass as cover material for landfills. In Wicomico County, where there isn’t enough glass to do even that, the shards are typically used to fix leaks along the sides of the county’s landfill mound.
Whenever toxic leachate oozes out, workers pour crushed glass into the trouble spot, carrying the potential groundwater pollutant down to the landfill’s liner, said Adam Corry, deputy director of the county’s public works department. From there, it can be collected for treatment.
“Why do we want to buy stone when we can use glass?” he asked.
The county also sometimes sells the crushed glass to asphalt companies to use as an ingredient in what is known as glassphalt.
The MDE recycling report suggests that the glass recovery rate would jump to 74% if the state were to enact two separate pieces of legislation: a bottle bill and another that would shift the cost of waste management from consumers to producers.
Pennsylvania
According to a 2023 report by Pennsylvania’s Joint State Government Commission, only 23% of the glass that state residents put in their recycling bins is turned into new glass products. And only about half of the state’s localities have curbside programs that accept glass, according to Trevor Freyvogel, glass recycling program manager for the Pennsylvania Resources Council (PRC), an environmental nonprofit.
As elsewhere, broken glass can make the sorting process too dangerous or complicated, or it can contaminate other materials. And, as in Maryland and Virginia, recycled glass in some municipalities gets ground up and repurposed as a landfill cover, spread daily to reduce odors.
Harrisburg stopped collecting glass at curbside recycling bins in 2015. Since 2018, the city has instead provided recycling bins for glass bottles and jars at designated dropoff sites across the city.
Lancaster County, meanwhile, continues to accept glass through curbside pickup because the material is valuable and infinitely recyclable, said Carlyn Fryberger, the recycling program specialist at Lancaster County Solid Waste Management Authority. “It takes a strong commitment and the right infrastructure to recycle it successfully,” she said.
Pennsylvanians who want to ensure that their glass is recycled into new bottles and jars can search for permanent or traveling glass recycling bins set up in their communities by PRC (bit.ly/PAGlass) or other organizations.