Nonprofit glass recycler Glass Half Full plans to build a $6.5 million state-of-the-art facility in Chalmette, supported by a mix of grants and loans from Benson Capital Partners, the Meraux Foundation and AMCREF Community Capital.
The new 3-acre headquarters on Paris Road will be able to process hundreds of millions of pounds of glass annually, which should facilitate the expansion of glass recycling throughout the Gulf Coast region, said Franziska Trautmann, co-founder and CEO of Glass Half Full.
“The facility will be able to recycle 300,000 pounds of glass every day, which is about 600,000 beer bottles a day,” Trautmann said. “Because the facility can process so much glass, we will be collecting glass well beyond the greater New Orleans area. That includes Louisiana and Mississippi and even the coastal regions of Alabama and Florida.”
Franziska Trautmann, co-founder and CEO of Glass Half Full, delivers her winning pitch at the 2023 NOEW IDEApitch competition. She is a speaker at the Thursday afternoon “Showcase” session at NOEW 2024, which will showcase companies on the verge of big success.
Glass Half Full was founded in 2020 by Trautmann and Max Steitz, then students at Tulane University, who wanted to revive glass recycling, which had had little presence locally since Hurricane Katrina, when the city’s curbside program ended. Over the past two decades, the metropolitan area has had a patchwork of glass recycling programs, including paid curbside pickup programs and some free drop-off programs.
Since its inception, Glass Half Full has recycled over 3.6 million kilograms of glass into environmentally friendly sand and gravel. The capacity of the new plant would allow – at least theoretically – to process 15 times as much glass annually.
The recycled glass will be used for Louisiana coastal restoration projects, storm relief initiatives, new glass products and more.
Faith Nguyen volunteers at Glass Half Full in New Orleans, Saturday, Oct. 29, 2022. Ben Franklin student Alastair Deng founded a group called NOLA Green Teens that collects and recycles glass in his neighborhood. (Photo by Sophia Germer, NOLA.com, The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate)
In 2021, Glass Half Full won the annual Startup St. Bernard pitch competition hosted by the Meraux Foundation. From there, plans to launch a new recycling center began to take shape. Meraux eventually agreed to provide a $2 million grant, while Benson Capital Partners and AMCREF Community Capital provided additional funding.
In addition to providing more recycling opportunities, the new facility is expected to create up to 100 green jobs. The Meraux Foundation – whose stated mission is to improve the quality of life in St. Bernard Parish – sees its partnership with Glass Half Full as fulfilling that goal, said board member Bill Haines.
“The benefit of the donation to us was clean jobs and a nice partner for the coastal restoration effort,” Haines said. “We believe Max and Fran are on a roll with their glass recycling business and it’s great to have them based in St. Bernard Parish.”
The new facility is being built on the site of a former landfill and is expected to be completed in the next six to nine months. The design was created by Williams Architects and the construction will be carried out by RGND.
Trautmann has longed for years to promote glass recycling in southern communities and play a bigger role in coastal restoration, and now with the new facility, she feels her vision is becoming a reality.
“I’m so excited,” Trautmann said. “It feels very surreal, it’s something we’ve dreamed of.”
