Those old glass bottles you set out on the curb to get picked up and recycled can be turned into a material that will help to keep your house warm in the winter. Here is how a glass bottle makes the journey from your home and into fiberglass insulation used to keep your house warm on frigid days.

Curbside Recycling

The journey begins in your recycling box. You put the glass bottles into a container with other recyclables and leave it by the curb. A recycling truck comes along, dumps the contents of the container into the truck, and takes the bottle to a sorting facility.

Sorting Facility

The contents of the truck are dumped onto a slanted floor. The floor is slanted toward a revolving drum. The contents are forced into the revolving drum to start the sorting process. The glass bottle will be sorted from the other material with a series of star screens.

The glass bottle is then crushed with other glass items being recycled that day. The crushed material is sent to a manufacturer to transform the glass bottle into fiberglass insulation.

Fiberglass Production

The insulation manufacturer takes the crushed glass and melts it in an oven with temperatures up to 2,880 degrees Fahrenheit. The melted glass is poured through very small holes at the back of a furnace to form thin lengths of glass called filaments. The filament is feed into a spinning bowl to be spin-woven together (the end result is a material that may remind you of how cotton candy looks at a country fair).

The lengths of filaments are banded together using a thermosetting resin. The resin helps to keep the strands of glass fibers from breaking apart when they are cut into smaller pieces after being spun into an insulation material.

The resin is sprayed onto the filament strands while they are being spun together in the bowl.

The material is poured onto a conveyor belt to form a bed of spun filaments. The conveyor belt takes the bed of filament to a presser where the bed is compressed down. The bed of filament is then fed into an oven that is just hot enough to melt the binder to keep the bed of filament from breaking apart.

Paper is then glued to one side of the bed of filament to keep small pieces of glass from getting onto your skin and clothing when you install fiberglass in your house. The bed of filament is then moved through a series of saws and slicers to cut the bed into slabs of insulation called batts. The batts are packaged and sent to home improvement centers and contractors to get installed into your home to help keep it warm on a frigid winter day.

For more information about recycling and garbage removal options for your trash, visit B-P Trucking Inc.