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<\/p>\nWhen The Durst Organization left its longtime headquarters at One Bryant Park in Midtown Manhattan last year, it had to tear the 85K SF office space down to the studs. That meant creating tons and tons of waste.<\/p>\n
Sydney Mainster, a vice president with the prominent New York family real estate firm, was in talks with a contractor Durst hired to recycle its drywall when she was asked a question that might have kicked off the next seismic innovation in construction sustainability: What else do you want to recycle?<\/p>\n
Mainster stopped in her tracks. What about the 22 tons of interior glass that was headed straight for the landfill?<\/p>\n
\u201cI have a crazy idea,\u201d she remembers thinking. \u201cWhat if we never put a piece of glass in a landfill in New York City ever again?\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n Bisnow\/Ciara Long\n <\/p>\n
\n Sydney Mainster, The Durst Organization’s vice president of sustainability and design management, has pioneered the recycling of architectural glass in New York.\n <\/p>\n
Every time a building is demolished or converted, every time an office is renovated or built out for an incoming tenant, landlords have to dispose of windows.\u00a0Just 6% of architectural glass nationwide is recycled, according to a Deloitte estimate<\/a> from 2017. The rest ends up in landfills.<\/p>\n But that\u2019s starting to change as some of NYC\u2019s biggest owners and developers adopt nascent glass recycling technology that could usher in a whole new era for building sustainability.<\/p>\n Considering 10 million tons of building windows are created every year \u2014 equivalent to the weight of the Titanic 19 times over \u2014 allowing for\u00a0more of that output to come from recycled glass could reduce the carbon footprint of the real estate industry, responsible for 40% of the world’s emissions<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThis hasn\u2019t been something that has been historically front of mind as an easy-to-recycle material,\u201d Turner Construction<\/a> Waste and Circularity Program Manager Nelson Russom said. \u201cWhat Sydney is doing, what Durst is leading and the momentum that is building in NYC, means this is hopefully going to become the more typical thing that happens.\u201d<\/p>\n ‘I Can Recycle Your Glass’<\/p>\n Shortly after Mainster asked\u00a0Durst’s contractor at One Bryant Park<\/a>,\u00a0Saint-Gobain,\u00a0about glass recycling, she was contacted by a family firm called Infinite Recycled Technologies.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Albert Lea, Minnesota-based company started looking at recycling architectural glass six years ago when it was recycling metal for a local glass company.<\/p>\n \u201cLiterally, serendipitously, at some point an email landed where there was a guy out of Minnesota who was like, \u2018I can recycle your glass,\u2019\u201d Mainster said in a recent interview at Durst’s<\/a>\u00a0new HQ.<\/p>\n \n Courtesy of The Durst Organization\/Guillaume Gaudet and The Durst Organization\n <\/p>\n \n The exterior of the The Durst Organization’s One Bryant Park and the interior after demo crews had removed the glass from a meeting room.\n <\/p>\n Building windows are usually laminated, glazed or coated in thin layers of metal to reflect the sun\u2019s heat, all of which are hard to separate from the glass itself. They are also stuck in place with sealants that add varying degrees of difficulty to separating the glass from its metal frames.<\/p>\n Most glass recycling companies that deal with consumer products, like old Mason jars or beer bottles, don\u2019t take architectural glass. Any contamination going into the furnace at a recycling plant could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.<\/p>\n Realizing that no company existed to recycle architectural glass, Infinite Recycled Technologies spent a year developing a prototype machine that could delaminate glass and debuted its new business line in 2020.<\/p>\n Because of the challenges, the process to recycle architectural glass involves a lot of different parties and stakeholders.<\/p>\n Owners like Durst contract a demolition<\/a> company via a general contractor. The demolition company separates the glass from other recyclable materials and smashes it into tiny fragments known as cullet. For exterior windows, the separation process also involves removing film, coating or glazing.<\/p>\n Haulers then take the cullet to a manufacturer that has purchased the glass waste. The manufacturer melts it down.<\/p>\n Manufacturers can use that material to make fiberglass insulation, drywall, carpet tile and ceiling tile products that go back into new buildings or fit-outs. Sometimes, it\u2019s downcycled into glass bottles or crushed into road filler<\/a>. Glass-to-glass recycling is possible but is only at its very earliest stages of development in the U.S.<\/p>\n Infinite recycled 250,000 tons of glass from 2020 through 2024. In 2025 alone, it has recycled nearly 90,000 tons \u2014 the equivalent of roughly 360 Boeing 747s. The company estimates it has twice the immediate available capacity it is currently using, said Patrick Elmore, the recycler\u2019s president of business development, indicating that adoption is now behind the technology.<\/p>\n Sandra Goldmark, an associate dean at Columbia Climate School and director of sustainability<\/a> and climate action at Barnard College, specializes in the study of recycling building materials and creating a circular economy<\/a>. She hadn\u2019t heard of being able to recycle glass used in buildings until Bisnow called her.<\/p>\n But after hearing that Durst and some other major CRE players are piloting window recycling, she said it has significant potential to cut down on embodied carbon<\/a> \u2014\u00a0the greenhouse gas emissions<\/a> created during a product\u2019s life cycle from production to landfill.<\/p>\n \u201cAs buildings have gotten operationally more efficient, the next important lever to pull as we think about cities is how we build them, the actual materials,\u201d she said. \u201cThis is exactly what needs to happen. We need to coordinate across sectors, across organizations to make sure that we develop the markets for these materials, the systems to get them where they need to be.\u201d<\/p>\n Why Isn’t\u00a0It More Common?<\/p>\n Demand for architectural glass recycling hasn\u2019t emerged at scale simply because most people in the industry don\u2019t know it is possible.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n Bisnow\/Ciara Long\n <\/p>\n \n Skyscrapers, like those seen from South Street Seaport in Lower Manhattan, are often covered in glass that hasn’t been recyclable \u2014 until recently.\n <\/p>\n Mainster\u00a0launched\u00a0a 75-member working group a year and a half ago that includes other owners and developers, construction and demolition firms, haulers, recyclers and architects. The group meets every six weeks, often with about 40 parties present.<\/p>\n Other companies in the commercial real estate sector are coming on board. Consigli Construction, Turner Construction<\/a> and specialized reglazing contractor Skyline Windows have all worked on projects that have involved glass recycling.<\/p>\n Gensler<\/a>, the world’s largest architecture firm,\u00a0recently completed its first interior glass recycling project with glass from conference rooms at its own offices. The point was to get an understanding of how the process works and create documentation so that architects can present it as an option going forward, said Carey Gallagher, the firm\u2019s sustainability specialist.\u00a0<\/p>\n GFP Real Estate<\/a>, which counts the iconic Flatiron Building<\/a> among its 14M SF portfolio, recycled 48 tons of glass \u2014\u00a0roughly 2,000 windows \u2014\u00a0at 222 Broadway, a 31-story office building in Manhattan’s Financial District<\/a> that the firm is converting<\/a> to a 798-unit apartment building.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are always working hard to recycle as much material as possible on our projects,\u201d GFP co-CEO and principal\u00a0Brian Steinwurtzel<\/a>\u00a0said\u00a0in an email. \u201cOne of the major benefits of converting office buildings to residential buildings (rather than demolish and build new) is the amount of the building that is saved thereby reducing landfill and CO2.\u201d<\/p>\n Infinite is fielding calls from owners, contractors and architects with inquiries about the process on a daily basis. But they\u00a0are still just a\u00a0drop in the bucket compared to\u00a0the thousands of companies that make up the commercial real estate industry.<\/p>\n \u201cIt takes a village to do this,\u201d said Stanley Yee, vice president for sustainability and technical initiatives at Infinite. \u201cIt takes all the stakeholders to really get on board.\u201d<\/p>\n The extra time it takes a demolition crew to separate glass is one obstacle, Mainster said. They already separate metals like steel<\/a> and aluminum, because those can be easily sold to recyclers for a profit. Separating glass would add another day or two to a demolition crew\u2019s timeline without the same payoff.<\/p>\n Anything that comes out of a building during demolition gets put into a dumpster that is taken away by haulers, either to landfill or to a recycler. But recycling glass means adding a separate dumpster to the site \u2014 which is especially hard in dense urban environments where sidewalk space is tight.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we’re doing our upstate New York jobs or our Massachusetts jobs, it’s a lot easier for us to just have three, four bins on sites,\u201d Consigli Construction<\/a> Sustainability Manager Liz Allen said. \u201cBut these are 30-yarders. They’re massive. So to put two 30-yarders on a job in Manhattan is a little tricky.\u201d<\/p>\n There is a way to make an economic argument for the process, Skyline Windows architectural sales representative Stephen Azierski said. Products containing recycled glass are cheaper than those with new glass, because it\u2019s cheaper to recycle glass than to make it from scratch.<\/p>\n Furnaces that make new glass have to be kept at between 2,732 and 2,912 degrees Fahrenheit for 20 years \u2014 hotter than molten lava<\/a> \u2014 whereas furnaces that recycle glass can run 30% cooler.<\/p>\n But at present, the cost savings that a developer might be able to make from using recycled materials instead of new materials isn\u2019t being passed on, Azierski said. If that doesn\u2019t happen, it is going to be hard to convince the chain of companies involved in development, demolition and garbage haulage to buy in.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n