Overlooked Materials

The legacy glass recycling model for the Chattanooga area is broken: *Glass is not collected curbside in residential single stream bins, and with good reason. During transit and processing, glass is often crushed into small shards and gets embedded into other recyclable commodities like paper, plastic, and aluminum. Glass is hard on equipment like garbage trucks and recycling equipment. It's a safety hazard for recycling facility employees who work on high speed sorting lines. Fundamentally, glass is not suited to the single stream collections model prevalent throughout much of the US. *Many Chattanooga metro residents can recycle glass through select drop off points, but driving to these centers is often an inconvenience and materially increases the carbon footprint of recycling efforts. *Despite accounting for >50% of glass waste, restaurants, hotels, and other businesses have virtually no option to recycle their glass. These organizations cannot use residential recycling drop off bins. *As a result, Far less than 10% of Metro Chattanooga glass is recycled. What is recycled is inefficiently transported >100 miles away, resulting in high economic and environmental costs. ENTER OVERLOOKED MATERIALS, an integrated end-to-end glass collection and processing company. We aim to: *Ensure all area stakeholders have access to glass recycling services that fits their needs *Close the loop locally. Manufacture sand and other aggregate products, creating new materials for outdoor projects, LEED building, and local industrial and artistic needs. *Help our customers tell stories with their recycled glass. In parallel we'll be surfacing stories tied to the rich history of glass packaging in Chattanooga throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. *Partner with area municipalities, businesses, non-profits, businesses, and other waste & recycling organizations to help drive Zero Waste in Chattanooga.