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A Louisiana nonprofit is working to turn empty bottles into free sandbags for residents to protect their homes from floods and, eventually, to mitigate coastal erosion.

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By Lauren Stroh

4 MIN READ

Apr 21, 2021

Dave Clements, owner of Snake and Jake鈥檚 Christmas Club Lounge, a beloved dive bar in New Orleans, has watched Louisiana鈥檚 coast shrink year after year.

鈥淚 used to go fishing quite a bit down in Delacroix area. Me and my buddy would go out in a flatboat,鈥� he says. Clements remembers finding 鈥渁 little spot, a little island鈥� where he and his friend would take breaks while fishing for redfish, sheepshead, speckled trout, and flounder. When they went back to the same spot a month later, the patch of land was gone. 鈥淚 actually stopped fishing because it was so depressing.鈥�

Clements wondered whether a solution to this problem has been hiding in plain sight, concealed in New Orleans鈥� drinking culture. Every day, the city鈥檚 bars and restaurants produce tons of waste in the form of glass bottles, and because the city鈥檚 waste management system does not offer curbside glass recycling, most of that trash ends up in landfills, unable to decay. 鈥淚t鈥檚 infuriating the amount of stupidity and waste,鈥� says Clements. 鈥淚鈥檓 a bar owner and everybody鈥檚 having a great time, and then there鈥檚 all this trash.鈥�

Two Tulane students also recognized this problem and asked: Could those containers be blasted to sand, transforming waste into a critical resource that could be repurposed to reinforce the state鈥檚 eroding coastline?

With this solution in mind, Franziska Trautmann and Max Steitz founded Glass Half Full, a grassroots recycling program meant to reduce waste and鈥攈opefully, one day鈥攈elp mitigate coastal erosion.

When Clements found out about Glass Half Full, he was thrilled. He regularly loads his pickup with 16 40-gallon trash bags of bottles and drives to Glass Half Full鈥檚 collection site to donate them.

Trautmann and Steitz first learned about similar glass recycling initiatives in Florida and New Zealand in February 2020, and 鈥渄ecided to try to make a dent in [the] issue鈥� of coastal erosion in Trautmann鈥檚 home state. They started by collecting recycled glass in a backyard uptown, before raising $20,000 for the startup鈥檚 initial costs through a GoFundMe campaign. An added $65,000 followed a few months later.

One of the project鈥檚 aims is to remind community members that individuals can help to mitigate the compounding effects of climate change. 鈥淲e always hear, 鈥極h, we can鈥檛 do anything about climate change. We can鈥檛 do anything about the environment. It鈥檚 all the big companies [and] the government. It鈥檚 up to them,鈥欌�� Trautmann says. 鈥淏ut when you collect glass over one year, you鈥檙e like, 鈥極h, shit. Individuals can do something.鈥� All those little things add up to something much bigger.鈥�

Trautmann recognizes that it would take an 鈥渦nimaginable number[鈥檚]鈥� worth of sand to restore marshland already lost, though she believes local leaders should still try, because the coast is Louisiana鈥檚 best defense against hurricanes and strong storms. Still, no single effort is likely to succeed in restoring the state鈥檚 coastline. Contractors working throughout the state have also struggled to acquire the volume of sand necessary to truly rectify the problem. 鈥淭he sad part is that oftentimes the work that we do is just washed away again,鈥� Trautmann says, because of the gradual encroachment of the Gulf.

But Glass Half Full has already been successful in reducing waste; in their first year, Trautmann and Steitz helped divert more than 650,000 pounds of glass from landfills. It鈥檚 made a difference at Snake and Jake鈥檚, where Clements realized that, every week, his 55-gallon garbage cans were mostly filled with glass bottles.

Trautmann and Steitz are still seeking city and state approval to deposit their recycled glass on New Orleans鈥檚 beaches. Trautmann is conducting experiments to research the glass鈥檚 toxicity, whether heavy metals are present, and whether it is at risk of leaching microplastics into Louisiana鈥檚 waterways.

If the sand is deemed safe enough for environmental use, the group hopes they can use it to restore Lincoln Beach, a historically Black beach on Lake Pontchartrain that was initially founded as an amusement park during the Jim Crow era. After desegregation, it was abandoned, and now it sits in disrepair.

During last year鈥檚 record-breaking hurricane season, Glass Half Full focused on creating tools for storm preparedness by repurposing their recycling glass into free sandbags for residents to use to protect their homes from floods.

Individual donors now make up the bulk of those contributing used glassware to the project, but the program is expanding to accommodate residential and commercial pickups.

At their drop-off location in downtown New Orleans, volunteers help separate glass by color: clear, greens, blues, and browns. Bottles are then fed through a hammer mill and smashed against a grate, turning them into particles of sand. The resulting sand is then further sorted by size, ranging from a powdered consistency to larger cullets. 鈥淭he finer stuff can be made into sandbags and sand. We鈥檙e looking into using the larger pieces for terrazzo flooring and other eco-construction avenues like stucco,鈥� Trautmann says.

In the future, this undertaking may one day inspire residents like Dave Clements to start fishing again. And Trautmann hopes it will mobilize other residents to take climate action. She also dreams that one day, larger, more capable, and more powerful organizations like the Army Corps of Engineers will take this work on, too.

鈥淲e鈥檝e done the legwork to show you that this works,鈥� she speculates. 鈥淣ow you get to implement it and make it happen.鈥�

This story originally appeared in and is republished here as part of , a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story.

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