Planetsave

Ever ruin a perfectly good beach day by stepping on a broken beer bottle hidden beneath the sand? It’s not fun. Now, imagine millions of crushed bottles beneath your feet as you walk the beach and gaze out into the sunset. Sound Painful? Think again.

Glass is the new sand. Constant erosion of beaches is leading officials to explore new ways to use recycled glass. When crushed into tiny grains and mixed with regular sand they’re able to fill the gaps and restore glimmering coastline. And if not to add further incentive, the granules sparkle in the sunlight.

It’s only natural, backers of the idea say, since sand is the main ingredient in glass.

“Basically, what we’re doing is taking the material and returning it back to its natural state,” said Phil Bresee, Broward’s recycling manager.

The county would become the first in the nation to combine disposal of recycled glass with bolstering beach sand reserves, Bresee said.

“You reduce waste stream that goes to our landfills and you generate materials that could be available for our beaches,” said Paden Woodruff of the state Department of Environmental Protection.

Sand is a valuable commodity in South Florida, where beach-related business generates more than $1 billion a year for Broward alone.

Sand to replenish eroded beaches is typically dredged from the ocean floor and piped to shore — about 13 million tons of it since 1970 in Broward. That’s enough sand to fill the Empire State Building more than 12 times over.

But with reef preservation restricting future dredge sites, sand is becoming scarce. And the price is rising as construction and fuel costs rise and dredge operations are pushed farther offshore.

In 2005, dredging brought in about 2.6 million tons of sand at a cost of $45 million. A similar operation in 1991 brought in about 1.3 million tons of sand for just $9 million.

The county would create only 15,600 tons of the glass material each year, not enough to solve its sand shortage, but enough to create a reserve for filling eroded spots before they can worsen, Bresee said.

Most of Broward County’s 24 miles of beaches are considered critically eroded, and more than a quarter of Florida’s 1,350-mile coastline falls into the same category. About $80 million is spent annually restoring Florida’s beaches.

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