Reinventing recycling in Louisiana
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 17 November 2022
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Franziska Trautmann and Max Steitz decided to start a recycling project in New Orleans after realising the city sent all its glass to landfill. Now their social enterprise Glass Half Full diverts hundreds of tonnes from landfill and is using the material to help shore up Louisiana’s eroding coastline.
Franziska tells us how they are expanding the project and we hear from one of their first business customers. We also find out why gaps in the recycling system mean the city’s waste glass can’t easily be turned back into new bottles.
Producer/presenter: James Graham
(Photo: Franziska Trautman and Max Steitz at their base in New Orleans. Credit: Glass Half Full)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Business Daily from the BBC World Service. My name's James Graham. |
| 0:05.6 | As world leaders meet in Egypt at COP 27 to tackle the climate emergency, we wanted to look at the steps some individuals are taking to try and improve the environment where they live. |
| 0:15.6 | Glass Half Full is a social enterprise in the US city of of New Orleans targeting two problems, failures in the |
| 0:22.3 | recycling system, and the erosion of Louisiana's coastline. We decided that we would try to do |
| 0:27.8 | something about these issues, and that something was recycling glass into sand, and then using |
| 0:33.9 | that sand for coastal restoration and protection. Louisiana's a part of the world at the front line of climate change, |
| 0:40.7 | where rising sea levels and ferocious hurricanes threaten its existence. |
| 0:45.1 | You have to be proactive. |
| 0:47.8 | You cannot be passive because if you're passive, |
| 0:50.0 | your community will not last into the future. |
| 0:59.2 | Thank you. your community will not last into the future. When it comes to big environmental issues, there's a common feeling. |
| 1:03.2 | Where do you start? |
| 1:04.7 | From a personal perspective, the challenge can feel too big, insurmountable, almost intangible. |
| 1:13.3 | But sometimes all it takes is a first step. |
| 1:18.1 | A few years ago, two college students, Francisco Troutman and Max Stites, took that step, |
| 1:22.0 | after drinking some wine and pondering why the bottle would end up in landfill. |
| 1:32.1 | Now, their organisation is diverting 75 tonnes of glass from landfill each month, and turning it into a material that can be used for coastal restoration or disaster relief. |
| 1:42.1 | I grew up in Louisiana, so I've lived here my whole life and have always heard about our coastal erosion crisis. |
| 1:46.7 | We currently lose 100 yards of land every 100 minutes off of our coast. And then on top of this, we are one of the worst in the country in the United |
| 1:53.6 | States for recycling, one of the worst states for recycling. And so those two problems have always |
| 1:59.5 | been kind of in the back of my mind growing up here. |
| 2:03.7 | And so when I got to college and I met my co-founder, Max, we decided that we would try to do something about both of these issues. |
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