Post-consumer cullet and potential engineering applications in North America

Waste glass cullet (WGC) recovered from almost all waste streams is contaminated with mixed-color sources of variable compositions. Consequently, over 60% of the cullet is discarded in landfills in North America. The present work provides an overview of the potential end markets for the cullet with a focus on collection systems, marketing strategies, safety and environmental issues as well as the economics of the target applications. Cullet can find major applications in construction industry as a substitute to natural aggregates integrated with different proportions of concrete to build pavements, and roads Cullet could be widely used in different applications due to its desirable physical, mechanical, and chemical properties. This makes cullet an appropriate alternative for natural resources. Although various applications discussed in this paper have well-established markets, low proportion of cullet has been implemented in those applications. This could be attributed to the higher preprocessing cost of cullet compared to the natural aggregates. Different measures are required by the governments to continue to develop the potential post-consumer markets for recycled cullet such as encouraging recycling of WGC and restricting the use of landfilling activities for WGC.