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Glass recycling up in Knoxville, but creating a hassle for businesses

On Jan. 1, the city of Knoxville said no more to picking up glass. The city is no longer accepting glass as part of its curbside recycling program.

While the convenience is now gone, the amount of glass being recycled is shattering expectations.

The change has prompted a 63 percent jump in the amount of glass coming into city recycling centers. Glass drop offs in the last six months of 2016 averaged nearly 28 tons a month - now they're up to 45 tons in the first month of the year. 

"17 more tons of glass was recycled in January compared to the previous months. Knoxville has really stepped up to the challenge of recycling glass separated,” said Knoxville Solid Waste Manager Rachel Butzler.

But it hasn't been a great deal for everyone who now must change how they recycle. Sugar Mama's on Gay Street serves beer and managers said it's a nightly struggle to get trash cans full of glass cans to city recycling bins.

"We used to take them to the recycling bin at the corner here and now we're tossing them away,” said beer manager Jason Carpenter.

At the space Sugar Momma's gets to use for recycling, there's only about six bins and they have to share that space with apartments in the neighborhood.

"These recycling bins that we have on the 100 block are constantly overflowing, we typically have to put our recycling in a giant box and put it next to the recycling,” said Carpenter.

For the city, this change means making better use of the glass that people throw out.

"In the past few years we discovered that the single stream process breaks up the glass into really fine pieces and you get a lot of contaminants in the glass. So recycling glass is the single stream is not an effective way of recycling glass,” said Butzler.

And making an environmentally brighter future for Knoxville.

Jason Carpenter with Sugar Mama’s said he'd like to see the city talk with business owners about how they're being impacted.

The city also is looking to expand curbside recycling by buying 6,000 recycling carts over the next few months. There's a waiting list, but officials say to give them a call if you want to get in the program.

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