How the Arenas de Vidrio project was born
“The idea of the project was to start looking for alternatives at the local level that were not the reuse of that raw material to make new glass, because we do not have the capacities in the country (for it),” explained the founder and current director of Arenas of glass.
Demaría, who, although she is a psychologist, worked in a collection service with several beverage-producing companies, decided, seeing her income decreased, to start a glass collection campaign on the Uruguayan beaches that gave rise to his venture.
At first, the project focused on making a mixture with cement from glass to build tiles. However, the sand resulting from the process can also be used for asphalt streets or join as Substitute for natural sand in water filters.
According to the United Nations Organization, the collection of solid waste reaches 11.2 billion tons by year.
The agreement with the department of Florida
Last year, following a visit to the Arenas de Vidrio processing plant -located in Montevideo-, the local government of Florida department became interested in the initiative and signed an agreement to recycle glass in their locations.
One month after this alliance with the Florida City Hall, work does not stop at the Demaría processing plant, which is already receives between 600 and 700 kilos of glass in containers and returns the same amount of sand to build.
“Today we are using the sand to blocks and tileswhich will be used for the new animal shelter that we are building,” said the general director of Health and Environmental Management of Florida, German Lapasta.
According to Lapasta, at the moment containers for the collection of these containers have been distributed in 15 strategic points in the city of Florida, with a little more than 33,000 inhabitants, and the objective is to reach all the neighborhoods of the town.
The collection, he explained, is done once a week and the containers must be clean and dry for collection.
“We are happy with the use we are giving it and the neighbors have taken to the initiative in a very good way,” he remarks, and points out that if the neighbors do not have a green point near where they live, they can request a new one from the Municipality .
The venture seeks to expand to other departments of Uruguay
In 2022, Arenas de Vidrio managed to collect a total of about 20 tons of glass to transform into an arena that stands out for being “thicker” and “faster” drying than the traditional arena, an ambition that remains latent in the future plans of the initiative.
Although the intention of the project is expand to other locations in the countrylogistics is “the big hurdle.”
Today the main goal, according to Demaría, is to have a new processing plant in the north of Uruguay in order to shorten transportation distances, since the bottles collected in Florida must travel 107 kilometers by truck to Montevideo to be processed.
“For now (those to add collection points) are quite isolated initiatives. The Florida mayor is the first to start looking at glass management, but the reality is that glass in all departments (provinces) is going to land on the ground,” Demaría said.
On the other hand, Lapasta maintained that, in addition to glass, in Florida bottles are collected to recycle oil and organic waste such as tea and coffee is discarded separately; ongoing projects to which it seeks to add new initiatives.
“We are seeing how to promote the recycling of organic waste and we are evaluating different alternatives: one is to build a recompost bin, another is to give a container to the neighbors and make a differentiated collection”, he rounded off.
Source: Ambito
