Ripple Glass Recycling
1642 Crystal Avenue, Kansas City, Missouri, United States

In 2009, Kansas Citians threw away 150 million pounds of perfectly good glass. To the dismay of the people at Boulevard Brewing Company, this included some 10 million empty Boulevard bottles – lost forever, buried in local landfills.

Area businesses use nearly 200 million pounds of recycled glass every year, so why was it so hard to recycle glass? Because there was no nearby facility to process the glass. And why no local processor? Because, in classic chicken-and-egg fashion, there was almost no local recycling.

The folks at Boulevard finally got tired of being part of the problem. So, with the support of local companies and community organizations, they came up with a solution—Ripple Glass.