Some of Florida’s beaches suffer from massive erosion. Broward County Officials think they have discovered a scheme using recycled glass which can help preserve the beaches. They believe that using small grains of recycled glass mixed in with the regular sand, it will help fill in the gaps and reduce erosion. Glass’s main ingredient is sand, therefore it’s a fairly natural solution to the situation.

If the scheme gets approval, the county will be the first in America to use recycled glass in this way. In an area where sand is a valuable commodity – and one which is getting harder and harder to come by – recycling a product which may otherwise may go landfill and saving money in the process cannot be a bad thing.

Around $1 billion is spent each year on sand for Broward alone. To replenish the sand which has been eroded from the beaches, the ocean floor is usually dredged and piped to the shoreline. Since 1970, around 13 million tonnes has been dredged for Broward alone – that’s enough sand to totally fill the Empire State Building 12 times over, and have a little surplus.

In 2005, around 2.6 million tonnes of sand was brought in, costing about $45 million. This compares to 1991 where $1.3 million tonnes was brought in for just $9 million. So why the huge price discrepancy? Reef preservation sites are restricting dredging areas and sand is becoming scarce. Construction and fuel prices are also rising, and dredging operations are being pushed further off-shore, increasing prices further. At present, there is little that can be done to keep the spiraling prices down.

In the meantime, recycled glass can’t entirely solve the problem. Broward can only create an estimated 15,600 tonnes of glass each year for the project – falling well short of all the sand that is needed. However, this glass could be valuable in that it creates enough to put into the worst spots, lessening the impacts of erosion.

Broward County has around 24 miles of beach with most falling under the ‘critically eroded’ banner. More than a quarter of Florida’s 1,350 coastline also falls into this category and collectively, around $80 million a year is spent in Florida counter-acting the erosion effects.

The use of glass in the place of sand was actually an unintentional discovery. In 1949, rubbish (including glass) started being dumped over a cliff in Northern California near Fort Bragg. Over the years, the organic material decomposed as expected however the glass in the rubbish started to become smooth thanks to the tumbling nature of the surf and waves. This area is now known as Glass Beach thanks to the smooth particles of glass that have washed up.

Recycled glass has intentionally been used in beaches in Lake Hood, New Zealand, and Curacao, proving that it is a viable alternative. However, the feasibility of such a project in Broward County is not yet known, with around $600,000 already spent on tests and engineering alone. So far, lab tests look encouraging with organisms and wildlife seemingly able to thrive in the new material. A small patch of beach has already had some glass sand added to it, with scientists closely monitoring various aspects of the sand such as heat and moisture.

However there are some questions which have yet to be answered. The long-term effects of adding glass to sand are not yet known, and the environmental consequences cannot be predicted. With any man-made change, there will be unforeseen consequences – whether these are good or bad is yet to be seen. Broward County are already counting the cost of another environmental scheme which didn’t go quite to plan – in the 1970s, 700,000 tyres were placed on the ocean floor to create an artificial reef. Some of the tyres have come loose and have been moving around on the ocean floor, killing some of the coral. Broward are now in the process of removing these tyres to rectify the situation.

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