City of Marquette to make drop-off sites for glass recycling

MARQUETTE, Mich. (WLUC) - If you live in Marquette, glass will no longer be picked up curbside. There are now two drop-off sites for residents.

Instead of putting glass out once a month for collection, Marquette city has drop-off locations for glass. Right now there are two locations for drop off and one is open 24 hours. This change is happening because the curbside glass collections have been mixed with other products, according to the city manager, Karen Kovacs.

“We’ve been unable to successfully collect a usable product and be able to recycle just the glass. There is a high level of contamination, there’s some other issues with the collection and we’re unable to get a product that is actually worthwhile recycling,” she said. So if you have put your glass curbside this year in Marquette, it has not been repurposed. Kovacs isn’t sure how much glass collected on designated weeks has been put in the landfill. But these upcoming changes should help streamline the process and allow the recycled glass to actually be repurposed.

Glass can be turned into aggregate and sand for the city to use according to Brad Austin the operations director of the Marquette County Solid Waste Management Authority. “So currently right now we’ve had local use on the aggregate, one of our municipalities landscaped the township area this past summer. Sand we’re using here locally, sanding some of our own roads here,” he said.

Michigan Tech has also been involved in using some of the aggregates to possibly build roads. If any further changes and updates are made to Marquette’s glass collection system Kovacs says that the public will be the first to know. “We will continue to notify the residents on this change as we go forward, especially as we get closer to January when it would typically be that glass recycling week. We will put out more information, for now we wanted to get that information out after the last full week of glass recycling,” she said.

The drop-off station at the Municipal Service Center in Marquette will be available 24 hours but the one at 910 West Baraga avenue will be open Monday thru Friday from 9 A.M. to 3 P.M.