Materials Recycling

Cardinal Glass Industries finds methods to conserve all resources wherever possible in its manufacturing processes.

Cardinal buys back our customers’ glass scrap and recycles it into new float glass. Each float glass plant reuses an average of 70 tons of cullet a day, which eliminates more than 150 million pounds of glass in landfills a year.

By scheduling these cullet shipments as a back-haul from our customers’ facilities, we utilize diesel fuel that would otherwise be wasted on empty back-hauls.

All Cardinal products are packaged and shipped on returnable, reusable steel racks. Instead of expending countless person-hours on the construction of more than 500,000 wooden boxes annually (the traditional industry approach), this $50 million investment eliminates over 20,000 tons of landfill waste per year.

In the process of manufacturing insulating glass both aluminum and stainless steel is used. Scrap from the production of window spacers and muntin bars are recycled back into its original metal, saving over a million pounds of waste a year.